


The Things Men Do

by palimpsestus



Series: Max of the Blue Place [2]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Backstory, Build up, F/F, F/M, Future Fic, Other, POV Multiple, Politics, Pre-Relationship, Smut, in which it's not a happy ending, some post abuse smut so possibly triggery, tags are evolving, until it might be a slightly happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-01 10:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 56,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4016305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palimpsestus/pseuds/palimpsestus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These are the things men do. They steal and they hurt and they kill the world. </p><p>But they love and they cry and they kiss their babies too. </p><p>These are the things men do. </p><p>____<br/>The world does not die in a day. Not the old world, and not this world. </p><p>And a new world is not born in a night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Road Warrior

The Things Men Do

 

She knows the things men do.

Angharad has always known the things men do. Her flesh knows it now too, in the immediacy of the blood that pumps and oozes from the scrape of her leg, to the slow crawl of the blood that feeds her ever, ever growing belly.

The stranger was sawing at the mask on his face in short, sharp thrusts of his fist. She has seen men do that too, the war boys who guarded them sometimes, when they thought they were safe enough, Rictus when he thought Cheedo would see, and even the old man himself. The fist that rises and falls, because men are all fist.

He shot her.

He didn’t mean it, but he did. The stranger, the . . . blood bag (she hates those words, hates them like milker and breeder and feeder), he shot her.

Grazed her really.

She knows the things men do.

He shot her . . . but he did not shoot _her_. Not Furiosa. Not Angharad’s brave and bold friend, who was face down in the dust. When Angharad tasted blood on her tongue, blood her own teeth drew to keep her from screaming a scream that would have ended the world. If Furiosa died, they would all be lost. _He_ would chop off their legs and their arms and keep them collared and chained and . . .

The stranger did not shoot her. The War Boy was as ecstatic as Angharad was chaotic.

He did not kill when it was not necessary.

He could have.

He did, after all, shoot Angharad.

But not a kill. Who knows the mind of a feral, Joe would say, rasping low against her neck. Angharad should know the things men do.

The Rig began to groan and gasp. Furiosa was spitting and thumping. “We’re dragging something, I think it’s the fuel pod.”

The stranger looked to Angharad, metal mouthed like a War Boy would wished he could be. “No, I’ll go,” he grunted, and snatched his bag of guns.

Furiosa’s water eyes met Angharad’s. She fancied she knew her friend well enough to see the surprise there too.

Angharad is surprised. Because she should know the things men do.

 

*** 

 

She didn't know war boys could cry.

The pitted wall of the War Rig was cool against her shoulder, where her shawl had slipped down. Cheedo, on her right, was warm and soft. Capable stared out the window at the darkness, and wondered if the War Boy was cold, hiding up in the gun turret.

She knew men didn’t cry, of course she knew that. But she’d sort of . . . assumed . . . that boys were the same. Still, Nux had cried. Tears dripped down his cheeks like little droplets of fire caught by the sunset. His tears hurt him, at least they seemed to. He would dash them away from his cheeks with quick, nervous fingers, until Capable eased them away with the palm of her hand.

Her sisters were quiet now, even Cheedo had stopped crying.

Capable didn’t know if she had any tears left. Her eyes were like burning coals, hot and searing in her skull. They could no more cry another tear than a rock could bleed.

She pulled the wrap up over her shoulder. “Do you think he’s crying for her?” she whispered.  She could lean forward and brush the stranger’s neck with her lips, but she hoped he and Furiosa wouldn’t hear her foolish question.

Toast snorted softly. “No,” she said, her voice thick with certainty.

“He can’t cry,” Dag said.

“Yes he can,” Furiosa said with all the conviction Toast had shown. “But he won’t.” Furiosa looked over her shoulder at them. “Not for her.”

The stranger made a noise low in his throat, half way between engine growl and moan. “The baby,” he suggested. He sat directly in front of Capable, and his head did not move an inch.

Did men cry for babies? Did that mean they could? Or just strangers who appear from storms carrying boys on their back?

“He won’t cry for the baby either,” Furiosa growled, and the stranger looked at her, quickly, like a thief. “He’ll cry for himself if he cries at all.” She turned her face to the window and spat. The stranger turned his attention back to the road.

She had to know, had to ask, it burned inside her like the time when Angharad told them they would escape. She leaned forward, drawing her knees up to her chest and hugging them. “Can men cry?” she asked the stranger.

For a moment, they all looked at the stranger, even Furiosa. Furiosa raised her eyebrows, as if asking ‘well?’

The stranger shrugged one shoulder and hummed under his breath.

Capable sat back beside Cheedo, holding her wrap tight against her shoulders. She thought about the War Boy, curled up tight and shivering in the gunwale. “Men can cry,” she decided with a murmur. Just not monsters.

 

*** 

 

Cheedo had never heard a noise like the Rig’s wheels spinning on the road. She’d never heard that wet, spurting slurp that sounded so much like a granted wish.

_No, no, no, no, I don’t want to go back. I’m not a thing. I’m sorry, I never said it, I never meant to say it, **I don’t want to go back!**_

Furiosa led the way, the stranger and Toast following close on her heels. Cheedo waited for Dag and Capable to clamber down from the cab before she dropped down behind them.

The shudder that had taken the place of her heart spread down her spine and across her shoulders in a ripple, something cool and unpleasant spreading between her toes. She stared at her feet, toes buried in whatever was keeping the Rig from moving.

“What is this?” she whispered, crouching to prod the wet ground.

“Mud,” the stranger grumped as he passed her by.

Mud. She’d heard of mud. In books. Where the water from the Citadel fell into the sand. She’d thought it would feel nice. It sucked at her toes and made her skin crawl. “Why is it everywhere? Why does it keep stopping us?” she whispered. Were the war parties behind them? On their tail? If she spoke louder, would Joe hear and call her back?

Might she go with head bowed, begging forgiveness? To take a long walk off the tower’s edge one night when Joe asks too much?

The stranger kicked at the sucking sand, sending a spatter of grains against the wheel, a shallow drum beat against the thump of Cheedo’s heart in her veins. “It’s bog,” he told her, pointing to the wheels. “It’s water in the sand. Don’t see much of it around here. We’re soft, to give us more movement on the sand. So we can’t let more air out. We need to lose weight instead.”

 “Lose the spares,” Furiosa snapped. She herself climbed onto the engine house, twisting at the catches for the engine plate.

“Dig,” the stranger guided Cheedo to the Rig’s great, spiked wheels. He kicked his boot at the bog, spraying the dirt backwards. Cheedo crouched, digging her hands into the thick mud, where sharp grains of sand stabbed at her palms. “That’s it, like that.”

This was work. Work that they had been spared, like Joe used to say, like Miss Giddy used to say (but not in the same way). Cheedo dug while Furiosa and the stranger used their strength to force an engine plate under a wheel.

“We need time,” Furiosa hissed, and the stranger agreed.

When the Rig finally started to purr and crawl forward, agonisingly slowly, and the wheels spat their mud at her, a slap of wet sand smacking her across her cheek hard enough to hurt. She squeaked, more from surprise than pain, and backed away from the rumbling Rig.

The stranger seemed to want to smile. He walked past her and raised his hand to brush his thumb along his cheek, pointing at her own sandy face. “You have to watch that,” he said, in a mumble that she could barely hear above the V8. He raised his hand to gesture something to Furiosa, and walked away.

She clambered back into the cab behind Furiosa, her fingers tap dancing across her cheek. “He’s not like Joe,” she whispered, more to herself than to Furiosa.

Furiosa, teasing the wheel from side to side, watched the stranger in her mirror.

 

*** 

 

“If he falls, we leave his body to Joe and the People Eater?”

Furiosa felt the ache of tight, rusted muscles from the hard knots above her hips, the sharp sting of her arm’s fastenings, rubbing too tight against her skin, and the black hot glow of her hurting back – her War Rig was hurt and so was she.

“Yes,” she said tersely.

Dag moaned aloud, staring back at the fog and the ever, ever present echo of gunfire. For a heartbeat, Furiosa thought the woman might fall to the mud, and weep and grieve for the loss of the stranger.

But Dag’s long limbs seemed to stiffen, and like a prodded spider she scuttled to the shelter of the War Rig, where Cheedo enveloped her in a tight embrace.

“He goes to Valhalla,” she heard the War Boy say, quietly.

“No, he doesn’t go to Valhalla,” Capable murmured, in a kind way. In a way like Angharad might have. That pain was not black hot, it was searing red in Furiosa’s very bones. Angharad . . . they would talk for hours into the long nights, sitting in the windows of the highest towers. Windows that opened onto only air, and Angharad would talk of the nights she wanted to walk right off the edge.

Walk like the stranger had done. Walk off to the edge of the fog and further.

Angharad never had, but she had slipped off the edge none the less.

The fog sparked and reverberated with dull light, a thick purple cloud billowing in its depths. Like blood in oil, Furiosa thought.

The War Boy paused for a moment, his hands clasping together. “We live, we die, we live again,” he whispered, and returned his affections to the engine. Capable had seen too, her lips curved into an expression of pity.

Poor Capable was in love, Furiosa thought. A little old to be learning that lesson, but just one more lesson that Immortan Joe had stolen from his wives.

Furiosa raised her gun, watching the shadows, the shadows that congealed into the shape of a man.

She could hear Toast’s breath catch in her throat. She could hear the War Boy’s breath escape in a gasp. She could hear the stranger’s breath ragged as he dropped the sack. She could hear her own and – the stranger brought a wheel.

In Furiosa’s life she had received many gifts. Fists and teeth and blood and, most hated of all, the gift of her chrome arm. This gift is not handed to her but the War Boy, and she still stood mute while the stranger washed blood from his face.

“Are you hurt?” Toast asked.

“It’s not his blood,” she said. The stranger, this . . .  Road Warrior, he brought them a trove of gifts. Guns and wheels and . . . yes, he brought himself back too.

Toast stared wide eyed at Furiosa, barely flinching as the Road Warrior passed them. The Road Warrior’s heavy walk pulled her gaze along with it, and she met Furiosa’s eyes with her lips parted in awe. “He brought us bullets,” she whispers.

Furiosa nodded. “He brought us bullets.” And a wheel. And guns. And himself. She'd never been given a gift she wanted so badly. 

 


	2. Sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are the things men say. Ugly and cold, shouted and roared.  
> But softly, kindly, loved and with play.  
> These are the things men say.

Sleep was a sweet and precious thing. To be hoarded like water. Joe’s views were similar on each. Furiosa had seen War Boys fall asleep standing up in the corridors of the Citadel. They were never given racks of their own, even if they were sick it was little more than a chair in the blood room.

She had slept in or atop her Rig since she’d been given her wheel. She liked best being able to stretch out on the tank, to ease the ache in her back. This she could do under the stars in Gastown or the Bullet Farm, during a stopover supply run, or refuelling.

In the Citadel, she only ever slept in the cabin, knowing the exact location of every gun. A pistol only a fingertip away.

Sleep was precious, so she drove slow and straight, trying not to move, not to clank her arm against the door, not to tug the wheel, not to move too quick and loud. Let them all sleep, to have their own precious moment.

The women slept behind her, even the War Boy, his cheek against Capable’s red crown.

And, though it wasn’t something she ever expected to see, the Road Warrior slept too.

He was on her right. He slept with his body angled to face hers, his cheek near resting on his shoulder. She could no more ignore him than she could the sun, whose bloody light was beginning to kiss the sky ahead of them.

He was not a man who slept often among strangers, she guessed, if only because those who did were surest dead. She felt the compliment, like she felt the gift of the wheel under her hand, the gift of the bullets that weighed down her guns, and the gift of his aid that had got them this far.

She thought they would have been at the Green Place by now, standing among the Vuvalini.

The Road Warrior murmured something, wordless, and then something that sounded like ‘no’. He jerked upwards and awake, with gun in hand, and she glanced over to say something soothing.

And he did settle. And still didn’t run. And still sat beside her. She determined to ask the Vuvalini to favour him.

When they reached the Green Place.

 

 

***

 

Dried meat, toasted insects, and coarse milled farls. The Vuvalini put out a feast for women who hadn’t eaten in two days.

The Valkyrie watched the young women eat, their long fingers snatching up handfuls and shovelling them eagerly into their waiting lips.

She noted the War Boy and the Road Warrior were not so quick to eat. The Road Warrior ate in short, staccato jerks. A man who knew what a large meal on a too-hungry stomach could do, Valkyrie thought. The War Boy was slow not for too much hunger, but too much care. He had given over half his farl to the red-haired girl, and all his meat, swearing to prefer the crunching, tongue slicing insects.

Her own long missed sister was eating slowly too, wearily lifting each handful to her lips, and chewing with a steady determination.

The Road Warrior glanced over at Furiosa’s plate and raised his own a little, the uneaten farl resting on the battered tin. “Trade the roaches for the farl?” he asked.

Furiosa nodded, the pair of tin plates bumped against one another as the trade was made, Furiosa with two coarse milled flatbreads, the Road Warrior with more toasted inverts. The pair returned to their slow eating.

Sitting across the sand, Capable closed her fist around the little less than half a farl remaining on her plate. She dropped it into the War Boy’s hand, and smiled when he stared at it. The Seed Keeper was watching the pair too, her wrinkled lips curved. She nodded when Valkyrie caught her gaze. It often was like this with men, when they ate with the Vuvalini, or passed through. One of the Vuvalini or another would sit close, and through a silent, evening long song, would make the choice to walk to the dunes together.

Traders, sometimes Rock Riders, the odd road traveller who came through these parts. The white painted War Boy was new, though, and he seemed quite happy to be attached to his red haired lady. Happy, if not entirely believing of his own good fortune.

The Valkyrie wished him well of that, wherever the road led him. To love the wife of a War Chief was no cowardly feeling.

And of her sister? And the Warrior who rode beside her? Well Valkyrie wished well of that too, though to wish well of it might be to wish it far down the road.

The Road Warrior pinched some bugs in his hand and tipped them into his mouth, licking his lips to catch the strays and crumbs. He tapped his fingers against the plate. “Thank you,” he said.

Valkyrie studied the hunched and tense figure. “You’re welcome,” she said, after searching for the words.

The Road Warrior was nodding, over and over. He stopped to look Furiosa in the eye, and then nodded once more. “Do you have antiseptic? Or some kind of alcohol? We all have some scrapes.” He placed his empty plate down on the sand and stared at it. “I need someone to check my back,” he added.

“We could all use some patching up,” Furiosa agreed. She laid her plate on his and stretched, rubbing at the shoulder joint which supported the weight of her metal arm.

Corpse stood up, brushing sand from her long coat. “I’ll fetch the kit,” she said, crossing to the bikes that were sheltered in the lee of the Rig’s shadow. The shadow was growing as the sun sunk lower, and Valkyrie thought about the great salts. With all that water they could drive and drive until Citadels and War Lords were far behind.

War Boys and Road Warriors though . . .

The Road Warrior was removing his jacket, slowly, and folding it neatly by his knee. Furiosa crouched beside him. “We can go to the Rig,” she said quietly, and Valkyrie studied the other women. The Dag was still eating, finishing the scraps the others had left her. Capable and the War Boy lost in their own world. Only Cheedo and Toast were watching the interaction, the Vuvalini giving the Road Warrior what little privacy the dunes could afford by tidying their camp and readying for the coming night.

“S’okay,” the Road Warrior murmured, and hiked his shirt up over his head. He hissed as he did so, and the Valkryie wanted to stand, to see whatever was on his back. She could see Cheedo glance away, and Toast’s pretty lips part in surprise.

Furiosa trailed her fingers over the Road Warrior’s back. “Messy,” she pronounced, in a voice too loud and harsh. Corpse, returning with a bag of supplies, proffered her jar of salve. “But healing. Not infected.”

“The salve will help there,” Corpse said, and she approached Cheedo and Toast. “Let me see you two, are you hurt?”

Furiosa was working on the Road Warrior’s back, her jaw tight as her hands made quick work of the job. The Road Warrior pulled his shirt back on with only a wince.

“You remember they used to say Joe never bled?” she heard Toast whisper.

“You remember he used to pretend he felt no pain. Hold our hand over the fire?” Cheedo replied. She shivered, and Toast put an arm over her shoulders.

In one smooth movement the Road Warrior was on his feet, pulling his jacket back on. “Nux,” he snapped. “Help me with the guns.”

Valkyrie leaned to the side to allow him easier passage, and she might have laughed at the War Boy’s betrayed expression.

“He needs help,” Capable sounded surprised. “I think.” She patted Nux on the shoulder. “You should go.”

When Valkyrie looked up she found herself looking into Furiosa’s eyes, her friend still rubbing her fingers together, spreading the last of the balm between them. Valkyrie wished them well at that.

 

***

 

The man was no fool, Keeper gave him that. He had whisked away the pale boy just as she was beginning to feel the danger of it all. As night truly fell, and Keeper’s poor eyes became all but useless, she patted Capable’s knee. “The others tell me you saved the War Boy’s life.”

Capable ducked her head, reaching up to adjust the goggles that sat on her crown. “Well he saved ours.”

“Hmm,” said Valkyrie.

“He has been useful,” Toast agreed.

“And he’s taking a long time with the guns,” Capable said, peering over at the great blackness of the Rig. “Maybe I should go and help them - ”

With a swiftness that would surprise the girl, Keeper clamped a hand on her knee. “Oh you stay here,” she said, and nodded to Corpse. “I remember the first boy who saved my life.”

Corpse chuckled dryly, some of the other old ones echoing her like wind on the dunes.

“I remember the first man whose life I saved,” Corpse replied.

“I remember the first man I defeated,” Valkyrie added. “He was sweet.”

“Now, girl,” Keeper said, “Who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

“Who knows what will happen tonight,” Furiosa muttered. She sat heavily on the sand, leaning her head in Valkyrie’s lap.

“So you might feel like thinking there’s a price to be paid,” Keeper continued.

“There’s no price,” Corpse reached forward to tweak one of Capable’s braids. “It’s not a price, a gift, or a prize.”

“It’s not a duty neither,” Toast murmured, and shrugged when Capable stared at her. “But if you want to. You know how.”

“He might not,” Furiosa murmured. She looked as though she was sleeping, stretched out in her sister’s arms, bereft of her mechanical arm.

“I . . .”

“But maybe you just stay up all night,” Torrid said.

“Maybe you just talk,” Corpse agreed.

“Or kiss,” Keeper thought. The prickle of her lips reminded her of the sensation. “Kissing is nice.”

“I don’t know that I’ve been kissed,” Capable said in a quiet voice, leaning in closer to her own sisters, each one looking lost in their own memories.

“Then you might start there. Let him kiss you between your legs, if you like, I used to like that too,” Keeper remembered. There was the sandy haired boy with the dark eyes, so many, many seasons ago. She remembered the sight of him between her knees, and the way his eyes would glitter. Like stars.

“Why would he do that?” Toast asked flatly, looking vaguely disgusted at the thought.

“It’s nice,” Corpse said with a shrug.

“You should ask him what he wants,” Cheedo said, her voice clear on the night winds. “I don’t know if anyone has ever asked him that. He doesn’t look at you like you are Capable. He still sees you as something else.”

The Vuvalini and the wives said nothing for a while, listening to the gentle patter of sand grains hitting the Rig’s tank. Capable got to her feet. “He doesn’t look at me like a thing, though,” she said. She tugged her goggles down over her eyes, tugged at her stolen boots, and began to march.

 

*** 

 

Max made a study of the boy, the way he crouched over the engines, paying them loving attention. Somewhere a V8 interceptor was crying out for that kind of care.

He hoped she’d get it.

He could see the Vuvalini as a dark huddle in the middle of the dunes. A strange set, all skin and bone and dust. Not many out here lived to get so old.

In the wind there were whispers.

Again he studied the boy. Wondered how much of that high octane blood was still in him. The exhaustion still crept over Max, the knowledge his body was working overtime to fill back up. A bag for use.

“Capable likes you,” he said, and grimaced as the boy jumped so hard he smacked his head off of the Rig’s wheel arch. “With your head attached to the rest of you.”

The boy twitched, his lumpy shoulder and scarred fingers all moving at once. He looked over to the dark huddle. “She’s so brave,” he murmured.

“Yes,” Max agreed.

“I can see why Immortan Joe wants her back so badly,” Nux ventured, and fell quiet when Max looked at him sharply. “She’s . . . precious,” he managed, turning the spanner over in his hands.

“Nothing more precious than any other life,” Max muttered. He remembered, almost, another woman. Broken irreparably. Where not even the last hospital anyone knew of could fix her.

And Sprog.

His hand leapt up to his face, and then it was the boy’s turn to stare at him. “But she’s brave,” Nux said. “And clever. And kind.”

There was no Sprog. No broken woman. No last hospital. Not any more.

“She might come see you tonight,” Max said, the words felt like they ripped at his throat, being forced out an opening too small for such an important message. “But maybe not.”

“Come .  . . see me?”

“If she does.” He paused, licked his lips, and placed the last round in the shotgun. “You don’t need to do anything you don’t want. She don’t either.  Just ask her.”

“I don’t understand,” Nux said in a small voice.

Max could see a shadow detach from the rest of the crowd. You will, he thought. “A kiss,” he suggested, and set the shotgun aside. “Start there.” Nux stared at him with wide eyes and hollow mouth, a skull floating in the night.

_Save us, Max._

He shivered. The salve on his burning back was cold and sticking to his shirt. Where Furiosa’s fingers had trailed her own brand of fiery kiss. Good luck, kid, he thought, and headed back to the others.

He passed Capable on the way and nodded to her. When he reached the others, the eldest of the Vuvalini was talking about the salt flats, the water in the Rig, and the guzzoline in their tanks.

Max picked up a rifle and hiked to the top of the dune to relieve the markswoman positioned there. He carefully picked a path that wouldn’t send sand down on the sleeping Furiosa below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm guessing you're a smut crowd from the response. As the great Immortan Joe says, do not grow addicted to smut, for you shall soon resent it's absence . . . 
> 
> and resent authors who take extra chapters to get there.


	3. The War Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are the things men wish. For bullets and bloodshed, quick and dead.  
> But also quiet and peace, and those they dearly miss.  
> These are the things men wish.

All her life, night had been safer than day. Gentler on her fair skin, cooler on her hot head, and quieter than her busy, pulse-quickened days.

When Joe called for her, it was usually in the morning, or in the afternoon when the cool winds would sweep in through the Citadel tower’s high windows, and he would decide on his wife.

It was the nights though, the stars, that dictated their fates. On screeds of paper parchment, Miss Giddy would neatly scribe the stars and moons that coincided with each bleeding.

And Corpus Colossus would add his own numbers, inspecting the height of Capable’s legs, the swell of her breasts, and the ease of a finger.

These were the variables in the formula Joe thought would bring him a son.

Capable reached the Rig and the little skeleton that scurried over its scaly skin. She pushed her stolen goggles up over her head and watched Nux stop his working and stand tall and straight against the starlight.

“Hello,” she said.

Nux hefted the wrench in his hand, looking down at his mismatched boots. “Hello.”

Still, she had always liked the stars and their glitter, shimmering through the wind and the dust. That time she used to sit with her sisters, to hear Angharad’s words, and weave intricate braids in Cheedo or Dag’s hair.

Nux’s shoulders were broad, his hips narrow, his neatly shaved head was still bowed as he looked down at her.

Did he think she was beautiful? All her life she had been told she was beautiful, that her beauty made her untouchable, and that beauty should be locked away, kept safe, in case it was used up, and then she would be discarded, dropped to the dirt like the other Wretched.

The Vuvalini said it wasn’t a gift, but how else could she give it?

She knew the feel of Nux’s chest against her shoulder, the feel of his rough fingers against her (perfect, unmarked) skin, and she knew the feel of his lumps and bumps beneath her palm. She knew that every inch of her crawled to know it all again.

Angharad had saved Nux’s life, not her, and Angharad who had convinced them all to run, not her, and it was Angharad. Beloved, beautiful, brilliant . . . splendid Angharad who had fallen from the Rig. She wished that Angharad was sitting with the rest of the Vuvalini. That Angharad had added her thoughts to the others. Angharad had always known what was right.

Who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow, the Keeper had said. Who knows what will happen tonight, Furiosa had said.

Capable licked her lips. “I think I would like to kiss you.”

Nux nodded, the wrench bumping up and down against his open palm. “He said you might.”

“They said it would be nice,” Capable glanced over her shoulder. The dark black huddle against the ink black dunes was the women. She wondered if they could see her. “And I don’t want to kiss you here,” she said quickly. “Away. Just us.”

Nux dropped from the tanker to the roof of the cab and crouched down low, stretching his hand out to hers. She gripped his palm, the warmth of his bones under the skin spread like water down her arm, trickling over her back and down her legs. She climbed to the cab’s roof and Nux turned, leading her down the other side, leaping to the dune that rose up and away from the camp. When Capable landed in the sand it sucked and spilled beneath her feet, and only Nux’s strong grip kept her upright. And as he wobbled, it was her body that held him still. They climbed upwards, their breath a rasp against the song of the dunes, and when they reached the sand’s peak, Nux paused to look back at the dark patches of black beneath them.

She stood on the top of the dune, her hand in his, and looked out over the flats. They reflected the stars. Tiny pin points of light scattered on what the Vuvalini said was once a lake. Nux’s palm in hers was hot and damp with sweat. She tightened her grip, felt the roughness of his skin.

Joe’s hands had been rough too. The pads of flesh under his knuckles had hard edges, the thick fingertips had been callused and would catch on the muslin of her skirt.

She let his hand go, and began the slow trek to the bottom, digging her heels into the treacherous dune.

“Wait,” he hissed, and then the sand began to fall as he followed her.

She had known he would.

About half way down she stopped, still staring out at the flat salts and stars. Nux came to a rest beside her, the sand trickling down between their ankles. “They won’t see us here,” she said. “Only the stars.”

Nux craned his neck to look up at them. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the crooked line of his throat, the protruding lump between chin and collar bone. He was all lumps and bumps, crooks and knobbles. Even the back of his skull seemed pockmarked with dents and dings.

“Can I kiss you?” she whispered.

He looked at her, and bowed his head in agreement.

Angharad used to place her palms on either side of Capable’s face, and plant a kiss on Capable’s forehead when Capable cried or dreamed badly.

So Capable raised her hands and rested them on either side of the War Boy’s face, their skin separated by only air.

“He said kissing would be nice,” Nux said, his voice sounded hoarse, like he was hurting.  

“If we don’t like it, we can go back.” And Capable leaned closer, brushing her lips against the scarred and painted War Boy’s.

Just as the thought flitted across her mind, this is not what I thought, the War Boy opened his mouth wider, heat spilling from him into her, and she felt her hands on her hips through the fabric of her skirt and her shawl. She let her hands fall to his shoulders, to rest against his neck, where sinews and tendons were moving, Larry and Barry pushing against her wrist.

This was . . . still not what she thought.

But it was better.

Nux had tilted his head and her neck bent in sympathy. The heat of Nux’s mouth against hers, the way his lips somehow drew blood into hers, she had never felt so aware of her own mouth, of what it could taste and feel. She was leaning against Nux, her hand on the back of his neck, and she wanted his hands to be moving over her skin, not her clothes.

Nux lifted his head enough to part their lips, and while his shoulders leaned back, his hips pressed forward against the soft curve of her empty belly. _That_ , she knew all about, and _that_ made her shiver.

“Did you like it?” Nux whispered, searching her face.

“Mmm,” she nodded, pressing her lips together, feeling the heat that was left behind like a brand.

“Are you sure?” He ducked his head a little to try and catch her eye. “Did you really?”

“I’m sure,” she said, but still staring at his neck, the hollow beneath his shoulders. “I did.”

It’s not a price. It’s not a gift. It’s not a prize.

Then what the hell is it?

“I’d like to do it again,” she said, lifting her gaze to his at last. And Nux was quick to oblige, his lips pushing against hers just a little harder, just a little warmer, and his hands tightened around her waist.

The women were right. This was something to like, the way Nux’s body seemed to fit in a shell around her, and the way he tasted her lower lip for a heartbeat every now and then, and the feel of his scars under her own tongue, and the way his shoulders moved under her hands.

It feels . . . a little . . . like a gun in her hands.

It feels . . .  a little . . .  like the flutter of life in her belly.

It feels . . . a lot . . . like she is standing under the stars and her body is rocking into and against that of a War Boy. That with every move closer, he is pressing harder against the curve of her hip.

Immortan Joe would not just kill him for this, he would . . .

Don’t think of it, Angharad would say. You can’t keep him from hurting you, Angharad would say. What he does, is all him, and all you do is recover, Angharad would say.

It’s not a price, it’s not a gift, it’s not a prize.

It was she who stopped this time, who pushed Nux back, just enough to split the kiss. “You don’t like it,” he said, his eyes wide and black, his words ending on a low.

It’s not a price, gift or prize. What the hell was it?

Gently, and so slowly, Nux let his hands fall from her side. He raised one to his lips, his fingers playing over where they had joined their bodies. “I didn’t know,” he said, the words barely making it past his fingertips. He caught her gaze and brought his hand down. “I thought you wanted to be his wife. I wouldn’t have tried to stop you if I’d known.”

She smiled and captured his hands with hers. “I didn’t know that I didn’t want to be his wife, not until Angharad gave me hope. Said there might be another way.” His hands felt heavier than they should, like all the weight in his body was focussed between her laced fingers. “She told me I was not a thing, and I don’t think I ever knew that before.” She raised his hands to her lips and kissed the knuckles. Nux’s chest seemed to swell in front of her as he gasped through gritted teeth.

It’s not a price, it’s not a gift, it’s not a prize, sex was not a _thing_ either. Not something to be locked behind a vault door, or trapped behind a padlocked belt, or forbidden to those and not others. Immortan Joe could no more stop her loving Nux than he could stop her breathing, and he would never understand why Angharad would put her body between his bullet and Furiosa’s skull, and he would never understand why Capable cried, or why she put her hand on the War Boy’s brand and pulled him closer for a third kiss, this one hard on her cracked lips, bruising her ribs against his, and tasting farl and aqua cola.

The noise that came from low in her throat startled her, it was an animal growl, as she stood on her tip toes to be as close to him, as beside him as she could be. The need for the War Boy was a thirst, and she was being presented with a cool stream to drink from.

She would not just drink, but swim.

She pulled him down to the sand, shrugging her wrap off. The War Boy was quick to tug the fabric so they were lying on top of it, and she pushed him down, perching atop him with a her knees pressing into the sand beside his hips. Nux swallowed, whatever emotions he was feeling getting sucked down back into his gut.

She leaned forward and kissed his throat, letting her teeth scrape over the skin, and her fingers curled around Larry and Barry. All of Nux seemed to shiver beneath her. One of his hands was stroking a long braid, fingers twisting in the frayed and knotted ends. She kissed him again, in the hollow between his collar bones, and again, in the middle of his broad chest, and again, on his lips. The hand of his that had been playing with her hair went to the back of her head, rested there, so heavy.

How were his hands so heavy, where the rest of him looked like he might blow away like the tops of a dune?

She stretched one leg over his hips so she was straddling him. The night was cool on her back, and he was warm against her front, and the smell of the white powder mixed in with the smell that was Nux tickled her nose.

Out here, everything hurts. Furiosa, you were so wrong, she thought, as Nux’s other hand slid down to the small of her back, sliding under the muslin and grazing her skin. It was enough to make her gasp into his mouth. They had all known what would happen tonight. Furiosa was so wrong.

She slid her hands down to the belt over Nux’s waist, and she paused when he made a noise she could only describe as a whimper underneath her lips. “You want me to stop?” she breathed against his ear, though she could feel her want throbbing inside her, her very own engine, thrumming and growling in her core.

“Nuhuh,” Nux gasped in a hurried fashion, so she unlaced the belt and peeled it apart, separating the fabric and teasing them past Nux’s thighs.

His belly rose with the breath he captured, she was conscious of the way his hand had stilled on her head, that his eyes were boring into hers, his bottom lip caught between his teeth.

He is comparing himself to a War Lord, she thought suddenly.

No, to a God.

“If you don’t want . . .” Nux said, as unhappily as she had offered.

“We both want,” she promised, and ran her fingers down the dark pink length, smiling as Nux arched his back into her touch. He was not dusted white here, and she wanted to kiss him there, just to see what he tasted like without the alkaline dust.

“What . . .” Nux seemed to find words difficult. “What happens next?”

She grinned and drew his hand down between her legs. Her intent was just to even the score, to let him know something of her . . . but when his fingers pressed against her she found her spine straightening without her will, and she hummed under her breath like the Road Warrior did, because words didn’t have meaning to the mad.

Nux ran his fingers back and forward between her legs, and she arched and twisted, humming to herself until he slid one finger up higher, inside her walls. Then the engine was revved and she was growling, unable to keep quiet for those over the dune, or the War Lords chasing them, or the silent stars.

This was so unlike what Joe thought breeding was, she wondered why she had been afraid of trying.

Nux had hesitated a little but she reached for his cock, intending to stroke and tease – the things Joe needed – only to find him ready.

The noise he made when she gently closed her fingers around his girth . . . she could die happy with that sound in her ears.

She eased over him, surprised at the easiness of it, at the fit of it. Emptiness and full and together and hollow and hard, they felt redefined. Like ‘thing’ and ‘sex’ and ‘Capable’. Nux had his hands on her hips again and had his head thrown back against the dunes, his eyes closed. She watched him as her hips rocked, watched him as her lungs burned with the need to suck down enough oxygen to spark the fuel for the V8 inside her.

Nux cried out, twice, in two sharp gasps that accompanied shallow thrusts of his hips, and then one slow, shuddering moan as he came inside of her.

Too soon, too soon! She could have stayed on top of him until the morning and all through the day . . .

“By the V8 . . .” Nux whispered, covering his eyes with one hand.

She pulled herself from him, dropping to the sand beside him and settling into the curve of his arm, resting her cheek against his shoulder.

“You’re amazing,” he slurred the words together and it made her smile. She reached out to trace the circle around his closest nipple, and he held her a little tighter.

“Do . . . do you do that?”

“No,” she murmured. “Only . . .”

Only men? Only men did that? Came like that? Was that true? Her fingers stilled.

“I don’t think that’s true,” Nux whispered into her hair. “They used to brag about it. How . . .”

She reached up to shush him with a hand on his mouth. He kissed her open palm, and then her wrist, her forearm, and while her mind was still ticking over this news he was kissing her throat and her breasts, tugging at the fabric over her breasts, then her stomach, her belly button. She rolled to her back, applying a little pressure to his shoulders to ask him to go lower. Maybe Nux was right, maybe it wasn’t just men, maybe that was another of Joe’s old lies. She wanted to try the kissing-down-there regardless.

Nux’s kisses had reached the tops of her thighs, each of his kisses a long, slow, lingering suck that left each site a burn. Her body writhed like pistons pumping, and when Nux’s tongue reached her . . . that was nitrous. Her nails clawed pink lines in the white dust that crowned his skull and she let her roar sound out to the stars.

“Not just men,” Nux murmured, flopping back down beside her.

 

Hand in hand, they returned to the camp. The Vuvalini were discussing something by their bikes, and Capable’s sisters sitting together around a lantern, casting a golden glow over their faces. Nux’s hand tightened over hers.

“We won’t get rid of that one,” she thought one of the Vuvalini said as they passed.

Who knows what will happen tomorrow?

And tomorrow night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I read a really interesting interview with Charlize Theron talking about how they deliberately played a lack of romance for Max and Furiosa. I was like "I completely 100% love that you did that. As a fic writer, I'm going to smut that up".


	4. The Fragile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are the things men hate. The soft and the kind, the lost and the weak.  
> The wins and the losses, the defeats and fate.  
> These are the things men hate.

“Didn’t think we’d be back here so soon,” Toast announced, dropping  her pack through the cab’s rear window.

Truth be told, she liked the old War Rig enough to pat its black hull as she dropped back down onto the sand. In the early morning sun it was already hot enough to sting her palm.

“Hmm,” the Road Warrior passed her one of their shotguns, his brows tightly knitted together.

“She’ll get us home,” Toast said, just to catch his attention again, maybe to get his lips to curl upwards in the way she liked. The Road Warrior raised his eyebrows and slapped a spare clip in her hands. He nodded to the cab and she climbed back in, her feet burning on the metal supports.

When they’d left at sunrise, she’d begged him to come. “We need you,” she’d said, “we need your help.”

The Road Warrior had secured his scarf more tightly and looked over at the others on their bikes, where Toast should have been. “Look . . .” he’d trailed off, staring at the salt flat horizon. “You’ll survive,” he’d said at last.

“Surviving isn’t much,” she’d muttered.

And then the Road Warrior had given her a smile, a real one. “It’s all I’ve got,” he’d said. “Go. Before the sun gets high.”

Furiosa rolled her bike up to the tanker’s join and swung her leg over the painted metal. The Road Warrior looked back down at his guns. “Capable, Nux,” Furiosa pointed to the bike. “All the spare guzzoline goes back in the Rig, okay. Enough to get us well round the bog and back to the Citadel.”

“Great,” Capable muttered, “because there’s nothing better than the taste of guzzoline.”

“If you’re tasting it you’re not doing it right,” Toast called, and saw the Road Warrior smirk. When he looked at her it was with a hint of censure and she smirked right back, slinging the next shotgun over her shoulder and cocking her hips.

“We can swap if you like,” Capable called back, though she had already unfurled a hose between her bike’s second guzzoline tank and the Rig’s.

“Less chat, more work,” Corpse said. Toast stooped to pick up the next gun, securing it underneath the dash of the Rig, where a pistol had sat once before.

Antiseeds. Plant one and watch it die.

She missed Angharad something fierce, missed her clever words and the solid, reassuring presence of someone who simply believed in hope and freedom and all those good things.

We were always in the Green Place, Angharad. She wondered how her sister would have thought about that. She wondered what her sister would have thought of Capable and Nux, the pair decanting guzzoline back into the Rig’s tanks. When they had returned last night, hand in hand, to sit in the old worn out shell of a car, one of the Vuvalini had handed her a tiny silver music box.

She had played it over and over, peering between the seams and joists, until she had a fair idea of how it worked. A rotating drum with a pattern of knobs, each knob catching the tooth of a comb as she wound the crank. Each comb tooth a different length, so as each one rung, the vibrations along its length produced a different tone.

Perfectly simple. Notes that went round and around as she turned the cog.

She wanted to take it apart, and put it back together, but she had the impression the Vuvalini thought it valuable, so she contented herself by imagining the inner workings as she turned and turned the crank.

With the guns stowed and loaded, she approached the Road Warrior, Furiosa, Valkyrie and Corpse, each one hunched over Furiosa’s bike and talking low, like War Boys talked when on guard duty.

Oh no. No longer. “What’s the plan?” she asked, loud, in case her sisters might want to join her.

The Road Warrior and Furiosa stood further apart, the Road Warrior tapping his silken map stretched out on the hull of Furiosa’s bike.

“We take the high ground,” Furiosa said, tracing a line with her finger. “There’s no bog there, we won’t get stuck.”

“We’ll make it to the canyon before nightfall, if we drive steady.” Valkyrie dragged her hand through her thick hair, pulling it over her shoulder. She looked Toast dead in the eye. “You’ll be home tomorrow.”

She pursed her lips and blew out all the air that sat in her cheeks.

“Yeah,” the Road Warrior said, and began to neatly fold the map.

Furiosa’s stump brushed her shoulder and she reached over to grip Furiosa’s in return. “We’d better get moving then,” Toast said, squinting against the sun as she looked over to her sisters.

Cheedo, standing on the Rig’s step, Dag, in the shadow of the tanker, Capable and her shadow, tossing the spare guzzoline tanks aside.

“It’s not home,” she said, striding towards the Rig. “It’s a rescue!”

 

***

 

As a child, she remembered watching shows of the old world, the way they ran water through taps, the way they would drive to hospitals on leafy roads, the way they would find guzzoline in stations and barter with coin for it . . .

That world was long gone even in her childhood. She and her people had the new world’s names, Corpse, her mother called her, because one day you will be one.

The Vuvalini had left the cities when there were still cities.

Now, who knew?

She had been raised in the Green Place, but back when they talked of distance in miles instead of time, and back when the Citadel was an Aquafier, and things like hospitals and cops and all of that still tried to persist in a world that had already died.

Men, for all else, are remarkably good at trying to continue when everything else is rotted away around them.

“She’s pumping air into her chest cavity,” she said for the Road Warrior, and heard the girls behind her start their weeping afresh. Children, all of them.  

“Hmmm,” the Road Warrior hummed to himself, searching the floor of the car to come up with the blade. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, “I know, I’m sorry.”

A slit throat would be a faster death for sure. Corpse had mercy killed many in her role as medic, and even as a child had helped those who would rather a quick death than a long, slow bleeding.

Her father, for one.

Her daughter, for another.

The Road Warrior crouched over Furiosa, wielding the blade, and as he gathered her gently in his arms, he slipped the blade through the space between her ribs that bulged with air.

Sucking wounds needed sucking, she remembered. The air would just return. She had a vague memory of taking a small boy to the hospital in Refuge, which used to lie three days to the north. A collection of tents and lean-tos really, but all that was ‘hospital’ in this world. She remembered offering her services in return for his treatment, remembered the old, white haired doctor whose steady hands showed her how to slice through skin and stitch it up, how to splint bones and remove them, all on the body of the boy she’d brought.  He talked about his childhood, how he remembered the first bomb that dropped on their land.

The Road Warrior was clinging still to the body of another dead thing, and Corpse raised her voice to explain again. “She’s exsanguinated. Bleeding out.”

Again the Road Warrior cast his eyes around the car, then tugged the hollow plastic from his shoulder scratching a needle into his vein quickly – those who know blood don’t always know it’s secrets, but this one had learned those too. Corpse watched him curiously as he held the tube up high, his own heart forcing out any of the treacherous air bubbles that might hurt his recipient. She thought about saying something about blood and type, or infection and bitterness . . . but let the children have it, she thought.

The Road Warrior was tied to Furiosa now, with red rope, and he rocked her body to him, head bowed low. “Max,” he told her. “My name is Max. That’s my name.”

Corpse glanced over to the girls, huddled together in a knot of soft, bleeding hearts. Dag still held the Keeper’s seeds close to her chest, and Toast occasionally touching the great bruise spreading under her eye. The girls were going to lose something else.

Lessons that they needed to learn in this land.

Corpse thought of the old, stooped, grey haired doctor she had trained with. He had been so blind he pressed his nose up to the bodies he worked with.

A few years later, they’d heard news that Refuge had been destroyed by a marauding band led by a soldier. The old man must have died then, if not before. She’d never thought to ask.

“Please don’t let her die because of us,” Toast whispered, her fingers brushing over the bare flesh of Max’s arm. “Please.”

“It’s not because of you,” Max said, smoothing thumb over Furiosa’s forehead, brushing the dust from her skin. “It’s _for_ you. And it was her choice. Nux’s choice. Valkyrie’s.”

Capable made a strange noise in her throat. Like a choked down word.

These girls were learning much too late, Corpse thought. They would never be able to regain their Citadel, nor lead it like men needed to be led in this land.

“Help me, Toast,” Max said. “I need you to find me something hollow to keep her side open, a tube, a syringe.”

Toast was up, crawling through the narrow space between the bodies. Corpse obliged, revealing her own kit.

“Anything that can help keep the air leaving her chest,” Max added. “And I need water.”

Dag crawled beneath the seats, emerging with a metal canister, hot to the touch. Max drank greedily, and slowly Corpse found herself making her way to Furiosa’s head. She pressed her thumb against the arch of Furiosa’s eyeball, murmured her name, and watched for signs of response. “GCS of two,” she said, and Max was nodding. “How do you know this?” she asked, inspecting his pale face.

“I used to be a cop,” he murmured, pushing his own thumb over Furiosa’s eyebrows, but not near hard enough to make an accurate assessment.

“You’re too young,” Corpse said. He might have been one of those who liked to call himself a cop, even ran with those gangs who dressed that way, but that was all.

Max looked at her, like he pitied her for saying it. He shifted his long legs so Furiosa’s head was resting further up his calf, and he leaned closer to her. “Furiosa,” he murmured, and she groaned softly. The Road Warrior sat straighter. “A GCS of three,” he said, and Toast emerged from the kit bag with a syringe Corpse didn’t know she’d had. “Listen closely, Toast,” he said, eyeing the needle. “This will be a long night.”

 

***

 

Somehow, Cheedo knew they would always return here. She thought they would return in chains, legs and arms removed, tongues nailed to their foreheads, but she knew they’d be back. And she knew the War Pups would cheer.

Let them up. Let them up.

Rictus’ hand had clutched her arm and pulled her up. Betraying him had been so easy on the road, so unthinking. It was trick him or die, and that was no true choice. As the platform raised them above the unlucky Wretched, she felt the unease in her throat, crawling to her tongue in bile. Rictus, who used to bring her presents when his father turned his back. Rictus, who did do things like kiss. Rictus, who none of her sisters really knew, was dead in the canyon with everyone else.

Max said those people had died for them, not because of them, but that was a narrow distinction that only seemed to hold true on the road.

And Max couldn’t leave the road, he was slipping away from them, even as they ascended. Cheedo looked over to her sisters, Dag who clung to her seeds, showing them to the Wretched who circled her.

They will overwhelm us, like Joe always secretly worried.

Capable, sitting on the car’s hood, fat, silent tears sliding down her cheeks.

We are not near strong enough to fight.

Furiosa, who couldn’t stand if it wasn’t for Corpse under her shoulder, and she was watching the crowds of Wretched below.

We put our faith in a warrior, and told her she could rule.

And Toast was shouting over the edge of lift, shouting for Max, shouting that they couldn’t do this by themselves.

Cheedo ran her hands through her hair, and thought of her last sister as the platform reached its berth. Angharad could not have stood this.

But Angharad, like Max, was built for the roads and the ideas and the truths that they both seemed to know in their bones.

Cheedo knew no truths, but she knew this Citadel. She knew how to sneak through its corridors, how to hide from its eyes, how to hide behind its walls, how to control those who lived below.

She stepped off of the platform to be surrounded by the white painted pups, and milkers, and those so broken.

“We have him!” she heard a childish shout, and this was taken up by the pups, carrying something small like a babe in the arms. “Throw him off!” cried a breeder. “Throw him to the ground!”

“Make him walk the air!”

“Let’s see him try to walk now!”

Corpus was so small and broken outside of his chair, and if it were the Road they would throw him off because it was the Road, and that was what the Road was. It was kill or be killed. The old Vuvalini woman was already assured of it, walking away.

Corpus, who used to write of their bleedings.

Would you die for me, she wondered.

Or because of me?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're not done yet . . .


	5. Fevered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are the things women do. Squabble, snipe, bite, scratch.
> 
> Compete. Crow. Tease. Exclude. 
> 
> These are the things women do.

It was a room of women.

More women than Cheedo had ever seen in one place. More women than she’d ever considered in her head. All these women have a name, she thought. All these women have feelings deep within their hearts.

The only room big enough and secure enough to host these women was the vault, and so they had chosen instead to crowd into the Organic Mechanic’s quarters. The cave walls were dripping with sweat, though the temperature was cool, and Furiosa was laid out on a bed, another blood bag sitting beside her, a pale man with hollowed cheeks who had simply shrugged when his tattoo revealed him a suitable match.

Cheedo had carefully chosen her seat, in the middle of a bowed archway, where she could hear every mutter and moan, and even those at the back would hear her when she spoke.

One of the largest milkers held Corpus in front of her. She held him so tightly the little man was growing pale, his jaws clenched together. There were still plenty among them who wanted to throw Corpus off the highest tower.

“You can’t let them all up,” Corpus squealed when the milker twisted his nipple.

“If we throw you down, we can let at least one up,” the milker snarled. “That’s enough for me.”

Cheedo glanced at the cages, still swinging from the ceiling. Max must have been there, she thought.  We are none of us where we started. “What’s your name,” she said to the large woman with the screwed up face.

The milker glared at her. “Tricky.”

Cheedo nodded, her mind racing quickly. She glanced at the blood bag by Furiosa before she lost their attention. “And yours?”

The blood bag shrugged.

She would have preferred a name. “We all have names here,” she said, raising her voice just a little, so those at the back who had started to grumble would shush.  “What is your name?” she asked the blood bag again.

The blood bag grunted and then, with great care, opened his mouth to reveal a stub where his tongue once was.

This could have gone better, she thought.

“Voiceless, then,” she said to him. “Until you choose otherwise. But we all have names here,” she turned her gaze back to the women. “And so do those down there. And those with names have motives. Those with names have wants. Those with names are dangerous.”

An approving mumble came from the back of the room, but Dag, sitting on the cot beside Furiosa, was frowning.

“They’ve all had water, yes?” Cheedo continued.

“Enough to last them a week,” agreed another of the milkers.

“Instead we must ask what is it we need,” she said, and fixed her gaze on Corpus. “Food. Guzzoline. Weapons. How long will our supplies last?”

Corpus was licking his lips and nodding along to the end of her words. “Food, yes. Food and water we have, enough for everyone here. But not more. Not the Wretched.”

“We have more than enough water for them,” Toast snapped, and Tricky gripped Corpus tightly by the neck. Cheedo raised her hand.

“The water but not the food,” he continued, rubbing the back of his neck where Tricky had pinched. Without his chair, there was little risk of his escape. Tricky’s pain was vengeance, not precaution. Cheedo’s mouth thinned. “We don’t have enough to feed them all, not all of them. Not for more than a few months, then we’d all start to starve. And yes, we still need guzzoline for our engines, and all our weapons went on the road.”

“We should look for survivors at the canyon,” was Capable’s thought, and Cheedo wished she could afford to close her eyes, to wince or glare at her sister.

“It’s a long way to the canyon,” she said in lieu of those other words.

“We need to take the Bullet Farm and Gastown,” Toast said, and this received a cheer from some of the women.

“No, we need to hole up and hide, stay safe,” said another milker. “Save who we can. There may be War Boys still out there.”

Toast leaned forward, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “The Bullet Farm won’t have been left unguarded, or Gastown.”

“You should surrender to them,” Corpus said in a low voice. “They’ll forgive you.”

“ _We_ don’t forgive _them_ ,” Cheedo said sharply. “You can all make your own choices here, named people. But if you stay with us, then you may die for us.”

She could see these words did not quite have the effect on the milkers that she wanted. Dag was tracing her fingers over her flat stomach, while Capable had retreated entirely from her sight. Only Toast was nodding, her fists clenched. Cheedo felt as though Joe was sitting on her chest, crushing the air from her lungs.

Sometimes he would whisper to her, of the hideous world outside, and stroke her cheek, tell her she was fragile and precious and that he would keep her safe, and keep the Wretched from peeling the skin from her back.

“Gastown is weak,” a man’s voice resonated through the cave and Cheedo stood – Max!

But the voice was wrong, and though for a fleeting second Joe’s weight lifted from her chest, it settled as quickly as it had left. “Bring him,” she snapped, pointing to the large women at the back. But the man town didn’t need tackling, he was limping through the crowd of women, skin smeared white and one arm lashed tightly to his chest.

Furiosa groaned.

“Hush, now,” the man said, and he stopped at Cheedo’s feet, asking for permission, she realised. She gestured to Furiosa’s cot and watched her friend struggle to lift her head. “You lie still now,” the man said, “no use hurting yourself more.”

“Thought . . . killed you.” Furiosa closed her eyes, and the old War Boy reached for her hand and squeezed.

“Gave me a good arse kicking, you did, but not kill me.”

“Good,” she breathed, then, though it took effort, “Sorry.”

“Why. I’d have killed you if I’d known.” He looked at Cheedo then, all his lumps seeming to move with the shrug he gave. “But Joe’s dead now, so I’m yours. For whatever you need.”

Slowly, Dag rose, and circled the man. “You’re old for a War Boy,” she said. She stopped behind him, and the man had his head to the side to try and watch her. “We are all named people here. Who are you?”

The man looked back at Furiosa, who still had one eye swollen shut, and the other half closed. The man nodded in answer to Dag’s question. “My mother named me Scrap, and that’s the name I’ll give to you. Now listen to me. Old Joe kept the towns on a short chain, and we were supposed to be supplying Gastown with that Aqua Cola and Milk you stole. They’re four days overdue now, and I’ll bet they sent everything they could spare on the Fury Road.”

“So we attack Gastown,” Tricky announced. “We make them submit.”

“I would leave Gastown alone,” Scrap said. “They’ll come to you soon enough. The Bullet Farm was probably left with Omen Owen, and you’ll never take it. Send people now to negotiate, with Aqua Cola as a gift.”

“What do we ask for in return?” Cheedo asked.

Scrap reached for a scabbed over scrape that went down the back of his skull. He scratched at it idly. “Whatever. The important thing is you look strong. You can’t be afraid of him.”

Cheedo nodded, because fear was what the men understood. Toast raised her head. “I’ll go to the Bullet Farm. I remember Omen Owen, I think I can deal with him. We’ll trade him a few cans of Aqua Cola for bullets. Would the pups be able to tell us what we need?” When Scrap nodded, she turned to Cheedo. “We ally with the Bullet Farm and thirst Gastown out, in the mean time we build up here. We should build a reservoir below, so when the water is on, it doesn’t get wasted in the ground.”

“I need you to be my Imperator,” Cheedo said, staring Toast down.

“Yours?” Dag whispered, taking her seat once more. She didn’t seem to mind the look Toast and Cheedo gave her.

“I’ll go with you,” Scrap said.

“Reliable,” Furiosa breathed.

Toast nodded to Scrap. “Find me pups and boys you trust,” she said, and turned on her heel, marching from the chamber, Scrap on her heels.

“What about this one?” Tricky asked, pinching Corpus again, tightly.

Cheedo looked down at the little man. Joe’s weight was on her chest, “Bring him to me in the vault,” she said, and she followed Toast’s route out.

“Wait,” an imperious voice called. Tricky, she had hoped the old woman’s thoughts wouldn’t catch up with hers so quickly. “Who put you in charge, hmm?”

“I’m not in charge,” Cheedo said simply, refusing to turn. “We’re all named people here,” she said, and she marched onwards, out of the room.  Very soon, there would need to be an answer for that question.

 

***

 

Toast had stolen a pair of leather trousers from a pile of clothes the War Boys had left. Boots too, and she stuffed them with shreds from her top. The pups clustered around a busted up buggy, and Scrap joined her with three battered and sick War Boys. About all they had left.

Why had Max left her?

It stung, even as she pulled on a leather waistcoat that she thought, a little, looked like his jacket.

“You’ll need this,” Scrap said, holding out his one good hand. His two forefingers were black with grease.

Toast reached for it and scratched the blackness over her forehead. Her eyes began to water and she wished she could scrape it back off again.

Scrap nodded. “You’ll learn not to cry,” he said softly. He pointed to the oldest boy, an ugly thing almost bent double with tumours. “Rev.” And then the other two, beaten and bruised. “Omidin and Nemo.”

“You know who I am?” Toast asked. Each of the boys nodded, not looking her in the eye. “Good.” She gestured to them to get in the buggy, and walked alongside as they drove to the platform. Scrap was close on her heel. “Should we take another car?” she whispered.

“We don’t have one,” Scrap said, equally low. “They know we sent out everything we have. They know too, we sent them out for you. Omen Owen has always been a mercenary one.”

“I remember.” The creak of the platform sent a shiver down her spine as they descended towards the ground. The sunset was staining the sky an orange so vivid, so strong, it hurt her eyes to look that way. “I was born there,” she was compelled to say as they were lowered to the braying crowd.

“I remember,” Scrap said softly. When she looked at him, he offered a half smile. “I was one of the ones who was sent to fetch you,” he told her as they passed into the shadow of the Citadel, their platform descending ever lower. “You hissed and spat and scratched. Caught me a kick to jaw too.”

Toast stared at the Wretched milling beneath her. She remembered that day, and the men all painted white, but Scrap, if he had been there, was just another faceless ghoul. “Sorry,” she said.

Scrap shook his head. “We were on different sides.”

“And now we’re on the same side?” she asked, looking up at him.

“I’m on the side that gives me water, food and strong walls, Imperator.” She felt the name was a warning, but perhaps it was because the title was so often conferred on those to fear. “I had a good life under old Joe. Had everything I could want. Liked working with Furiosa. Liked guarding the War Rig. But that life’s gone now. I can fight you, or try and make a new life.”

“Just as good?”

Scrap didn’t answer that, and the platform landed on the ground with a shudder. The Wretched began to press closer and Toast strode forward, her boots hitting the dirt. They felt strange on her feet, made her feel heavy and clumsy.

Max wore boots.

She let the Wretched touch her, reach for hands and for her clothes, and she walked until she and the buggy, and Scrap, always on her heels, were at the edges of the Citadel. Then she climbed aboard, helped by Scrap. They drove into the twilight, into the blackness of night, and Toast sat between Scrap and Nemo, thinking of what Max might do at the Bullet Farm.

Perhaps he’d be there first.  Maybe Max would have already taken the Bullet Farm and be waiting there on top of Omen Owen’s body. That smile of his, playing on the corners of his mouth.

“Did any of you know Nux?” she asked.

“No,” Scrap said after a long silence. “Reckon we didn’t.”

 

The Bullet Farm was brightly lit in the night when they rolled up. “They’re burning guzzoline,” Toast said as their buggy slowed before the gates, just outside of machine gun range. “What does that mean?”

Scrap shook his head. “That they’re trying to impress us.”

“We should have brought another car,” she glanced down the road behind them, in the hope that Cheedo might have thought so and sent another behind them. “This is crazy,” she whispered.

“Luckily, crazy is what we do,” Scrap said. He reached forward to pat the driver’s shoulder. “Rev, you stay here. Best they not see you. Toast, you stay in until I’ve spoken with them on the gates.”

Toast peered up at the chain link fence and the watchtowers shining their lights. She remembered low, concrete buildings half buried by sand, and the tents that the Wretched lived in. She remembered the chug of the generators that made those lights. Maybe they were already allied with Gastown. “I’ll get out first,” she said, and when Scrap looked at her she shrugged. “I’m the Imperator, am I not?”

At this, Scrap leaned back so she could climb over him, but she noted he was pretty damn quick on her heels, Omidin and Nemo not so quick on his.

“I am Imperator Toast,” she called, walking towards the line she knew existed, where machine gun fire could shred her in a second.

But then, a sniper would have already killed her.

She walked closer, and Scrap did not hesitate to follow.

“From the Citadel. I wish to speak with Omen Owen.” She stopped ten feet from the gates and waited, her body tingling like it did on the Fury Road.

Max walked into the night and came back with guns and bullets and boots and a wheel.

She would come back with an ally.

She looked at Scrap and he shook his head slightly. “You know who I am,” she squinted at the bright lights of the watchtower and fancied she could hear talking just beyond it, angry, frightened voices. “You know that means he’s dead. They are all dead.”

After a moment, the gates creaked and she could see shadows resolve behind the chain link.

“Breathe,” Scrap said quietly, and she forced herself to exhale as a party walked out to meet her, led by the man she remembered as Omen Owen. With long grey hair and only half a face, he always looked more like a nightmare than a man. Mothers used to tell their children Omen Owen would eat their feet if they weren’t good.

“I know you, alright,” Omen Owen chuckled, coming to a rest in front of her. Perhaps a man’s height away from them.

He was cautious, she realised. If not afraid. This made her smile and she held her black painted head a little higher. “Then you know it’s true,” she said.

Omen Owen spat bloody mucus to the sand. The noise of his suck and phht opened doors in her mind, of being kept aside for Immortan Joe, traded for a year’s worth of Aqua Cola. “Why are you here,” Omen Owen asked.

“You know why.” She gestured to Nemo. “Bring them the water.”

Nemo and Scrap exchanged a look, and it wasn’t until Scrap nodded that Nemo shouldered his gun and hurried back to the revving buggy.  He brought the cans two by two, until four blue plastic tubs sat in front of Omen Owen.

“That won’t last me long,” Omen Owen said.

“Well.” Toast folded her arms. “Encourage me to bring more.”

“How about I shoot these pups you’ve got tailing you, and then shoot you, for good measure?” He was watching her with one glittering eye, mucus already pooling in his half-mouth.

She made a show of looking bored. “Then you’ll be a long time breaching the Citadel before you get another drop.”

One of Omen Owen’s men leaned in to speak to him in a hushed undertone. Her eyes were adjusting to the light, the men at Owen’s back were nothing more than pups really, and the ones he had beside him were old and sick.

“You want nothing else?” Omen Owen asked after a moment.

Breathe. “You decide,” she purred.

After a moment, Omen Owen raised his hand. Two boys dragged a cart forward. They opened it to reveal tiny little antiseeds, and somewhat larger antiseeds too.

“How generous,” Toast said, bowing her head.

Omen Owen snorted and spat. “To our future trades,” he said, raising his gun.

“To future trades,” she agreed, and clenched her shaking fists the whole walk back to the buggy. She climbed back into the back seat while Nemo and Omidin lifted the crate.

Rev twisted slightly in his seat. “That was chrome,” he said.

Toast chuckled, and the laughter kept coming even as they Scrap and Nemo joined her in the back seat again, and as they drove back to the Citadel, the whole car rang with belly-aching laughter.

 

***

 

Of all the times she’d been patched up in the Organic Mechanic’s lair, she’d never known it so quiet, so devoid of pained moans and desperate entreaties. It was almost quiet enough to sleep, with Corpse nearby and her pain just a gentle tap at her nerves.

She heard the boots first, the heavy clunk of his walk, and the creak of his brace as he sat on the edge of her cot.

“I knew you’d come back,” she whispered, not opening her eyes.

His hand brushed her cheek, traced the curve of her collarbone, and then alighted gently on the pain in her side. “Hmm.”

“Your name is Max,” she said, turning her head toward him.

“Sshhh.” She heard movement, and the rustle of leather, the thump of boots being removed. His hands returned, this time to delicately trace fingers over her swollen eye. Her sand scoured nerves protested, but she could almost lean into his touch, encourage the pain.

“Where did you go?”

The weight above her moved, she could smell him – intimately familiar from their last few days, the tang of a man’s sweat, with oil and acrid sweetness. She breathed like a drowning woman, until his lips graced hers, just a wind’s whisper on hers, his hand going to the nape of her neck where she sometimes still felt a brand’s burn.

She arched her back to push against his kiss, to capture his lips with hers, and tie them together with blood once more.

His other hand lay upon her breast, thumb resting just under her nipple and she groaned. She was too sore, too broken. Her body would collect these promises like a fever.

He sat up and she felt the cold that lay in the space between their bodies. “Where did you go?” she repeated.

“To get the War Boy,” he said, in a voice as soft as the one he used for his own name, and she felt a tear slide from her swollen eye.

“I knew you would,” she whispered.

“And Joe,” he said. “And the others. We’re all here. All of us.”

The air was so very cold on her skin, and her heart fluttered rapidly against her ribs. High octane blood was roaring in her ears. “What?”

“We’re all here. We came back for you.”

“No . . .” she forced her good eye open and felt her scream bubbling up in her throat. It was not Max on her bed but Joe, his leering mask dripping blood. His hands returned to her breast and she screamed.

She screamed and screamed and screamed.


	6. Advisor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is how men lie, when desperate and cornered, and weaker than ought. 
> 
> They make pretty and sweet, with kiss and cry.
> 
> This is how men lie.

The pups had to pile sand up against the vault door as high as her head before she allowed herself to walk out of its sight.

No one would close the door on her again. She would come and go as she pleased from the vault.

Dag took one look at the door and shook her head, returning back to wherever she had colonised. She was still wrapped in her white robes, Cheedo noticed. She had stripped the rough white fabric from her body the moment she’d got to the vault, and dipped it in the shallow pool, along with engine grease, coal ash and bonechar.

When her Imperator Toast returned with bullets, Cheedo was wearing grey and received her war party in her own suite.

“Saw Capable down with the pups,” Toast said by way of greeting.

“Building the reservoir,” Cheedo said, and she lifted one of the bullets from the crate the two War Boys had carried up. It sat cool and snub between thumb and forefinger. Cheedo could twist and spin it between her fingers, this thing that could kill. “You did well,” she said, and looked at the pair of War Boys. “You used to get extra water rations for a good job, didn’t you?”

They nodded, not quite looking at her.

Cheedo looked at Toast. She’d painted her forehead black like Furiosa had, and some of the grease had formed hard spikes of hair on her scalp. She was dressed like a War Boy too, a cross between Furiosa and Max, she looked like she belonged to the road. Cheedo ran her hand through her hair.

“What would you like?” Toast asked in a soft voice. “You’ve done well, you should be rewarded.”

The two boys looked at one another and then finally at Toast. “We’d like to be with you next time you go out,” they said.

“Done,” and Toast bowed her head. The boys scampered away faster than spiders when you turned on the light, and it was only Toast and Cheedo in the chamber. “It’s all they know how to ask for,” Toast said, adjusting the sit of her leather pants on her hips.

“It’s all we can give until we figure out what they want,” Cheedo said. “Or what we can tell them they want.”

Toast snorted. “How’s Furiosa?” she asked, quieter still.

“Still in the mechanic’s lair.”

“And Dag?”

“I don’t know. She won’t come in here. I think she’s gone down with Capable to tend to the Wretched.”

Toast nodded and then looked at her. “What did you do with Corpus?”

“He’s in the bedroom,” Cheedo pointed her thumb in that direction. “I need you, Toast. The others . . .”

Toast prodded her tongue against the healed split on her lip. She nodded again. “What do you need?”

Cheedo twisted her long dark hair over her right shoulder and turned to face her sister. “I need you to come back tonight and tell me everything in this tower.”

Toast bowed her head once and left, marching from the chamber with ringing boots. Cheedo swallowed, staring at the open door. A door that would not be closed.

Though she shivered, she turned her back and walked to the bedroom, keeping her head held high. On one of the narrow beds, the milkers had left Corpus. The little man was sitting wedged up against a set of pillows, breathing hard in the hot midday air. He watched her with wide eyes and open mouth, like an animal caught in a trap.

“How many people can I feed?” she asked in a whisper.

Corpus wheezed with laughter. “You’re late, aren’t you,” he hissed. “I know what’s between your legs better than you . . .”

“How many people can I feed?”

“I knew you would be. Why’d you think I’d kept you out of Dad’s bed for so long?”

“How many people can I feed?”

“What’s it like, fucking a boy?”

She ran her tongue over her gritted teeth from the inside. “How many.” It is a great effort not to pick him up and snap his neck. “People.” Not to dash his skull against the stone. “Can.” Not to throw him from the highest window. “I feed?”

 “S’pose now you could pass him off for Dad’s,” Corpus wheezed. “His grandson.”

She licked her lips, dry even with the water that was plentiful here. The morning that she’d spent curled over a privvy spitting yellow bile into the waste had been loud enough for Corpus to hear. She needed Toast to give her numbers now, she needed Dag and Capable to turn their heads from their Wretched. She needed Tricky to take a short walk off a high cliff. She needed to know how many people they could feed.

But she had the day to endure yet. “How many people can I feed?”

 

 

***

 

The sun blazed high above them, pounding down on their heads and shoulders. Dag sat with her legs crossed on a rock, sheltered by some of the parasol like concoctions the Wretched made. The woman who had made the gift was sitting close by, seemingly unbothered by the heat. Dag supposed her skin was so red raw she didn’t notice anything else.

She had spent the morning talking with the Wretched, learning their names, learning that some never had names anyway, and watching Capable and the pups clear the muddy bed of the would-be reservoir. They had piled rocks up by Dag’s feet. Little dead seeds. Idly, Dag rubbed her toes along one that had been sanded smooth by the sheer force of the water that would rain down.

One of Dag’s hands was idly rubbing her belly. Inside grew another little seed, she thought. Little Joe.

Just you stay in there, she thought.

Another of the Wretched approached her, this one with a tiny white skull held in its withered hand. “For you,” it said.

“Thank you,” Dag reached out and plucked the skull from its hands. The Wretched hummed approvingly as she held the translucent bone up to the sun. “What is it?” she breathed.

“Bird,” the Wretched said, and with a few bows, it retreated, seeming like it faded into the rocks.

Dag held the little bird skull in her lap for a while, thinking of what a beautiful creature it must have been, to have bones so thin and delicate.

After a while, Capable came to sit with her, and take a drink from the skin of water that rested by Dag’s thigh. Capable’s fair skin was encrusted with dirt and grime, except for the beds on her cheeks where little rivers of salt water trickled.

Salt was sweat. Salt was tears.

Dag more often than not spoke wrongly, so she said nothing, just in case.

When Capable’s war pups returned from their rest, Capable walked back to the mud pit, and continued hauling rocks. Dag met more Wretched, and sat, and watched, and occasionally ran her fingers over the smooth bird skull. When the sun began to sink and the Citadel shadows grew long, Dag called for the War Pups and they eagerly scampered to join her, to escape their silent mistress. While Dag waited for the platform to descend, she watched her sister still pick in the mud.

“The eagle who ate,” she murmured. It was a story from Miss Giddy. An eagle who ate and ate, but could never finish his meal because it kept growing back.

Her court of Wretched were retreating as the platform descended and she waved one of them over. “Don’t you want to come?”

“No, no,” the old woman shook her head, smiling with no teeth in her red gums. “He’ll be back,” she whispered, patting Dag’s forearm with all the strength of a bluefly.

Dag frowned. “Joe’s dead,” she said, catching the woman’s old hands. “You don’t need to fear.”

The woman shook her head, smiling fondly. “He’ll be reborn,” she said. “The others should not have gone up,” and she made a sucking noise with her tongue, staring up at the platform. “When he rises, he will throw them down.”

Dag tilted her head to look up at the highest green gardens of the Citadel. “When he rises,” she repeated, tasting the words on an unruly tongue.

The old woman reached for Dag’s belly, held her bony fingers there. “You be safe, girl,” the woman said, and hobbled away.

When the platform hit the dust, it was only Dag, the war pups, and a silent, grimy Capable who climbed on board. Dag waited to see if any Wretched would join, but all those brave enough to ascend had already made the climb.

 

***

 

Corpse spat in the pool. “This is an ode to ego.”

Cheedo had finished braiding her hair, a long black rope that hung over her shoulder. She’d found boots too, and wore them with her newly grey wraps. She met Corpse in the vault’s anteroom, using the Vuvalini’s gesture to greet the woman, catching the air before her and drawing it to her chest.

Corpse sniffed.

“Thank you for coming,” Cheedo said. “How is Furiosa?”

“Sick. The tongueless one is bleeding himself dry for her though. I’ll take that.” Corpse folded her arms.

Cheedo ran her tongue along the inside of her teeth once more. “I need your help.”

The old woman sneered down at the water pooling at her feet. “This is wasteful,” she pointed. “Those windows indefensible. You’ve barred your only door open. You’re keeping that little rat alive. Those milking women are too far broken. If you don’t start cultivating mould on bread, Furiosa will die.”

Cheedo held up her palm, her eyes closing. “I’m pregnant,” she snapped.

This silenced the woman. Corpse stood stock still, her jaws working like she was chewing on her own tongue. At last, she nodded. “What do you need?”

“I need to know,” and Cheedo licked her lips. “Is there a way to be rid of it?”

“There is,” Corpse said. “I have herbs, dried. Drink them and you will cramp, bleed, the baby comes away,” the old, gnarled medic fluttered her fingers over the pool. “It will take me an hour or so to prepare.”

An hour or so. For last of a man to be ripped from a wife. Cheedo nodded and waited for the old medic to leave before she allowed herself to turn and slowly, dragging one foot in front of the other, she returned to the bedrooms.

This was not where Rictus used to come to her. This was the room she would leave on silent feet, to find the hulking man who opened the vault door waiting, his eyes round and filled with fear, his heavy set shoulders hunched up and close over his neck. Cheedo would sit him down between her legs and knead her fingers over those tight knots, breaking each one down, making him soft and malleable under her hands.

“You’re making a mistake,” Corpus wheezed. He hadn’t moved much, near as she could tell he couldn’t. He was still splayed out on the cushions, and watching her with beady little eyes that darted over her body, half bared by the wraps she wore.

She tilted her head to the side, feeling the weight of her braid tugging at the base of her scalp. “How many moons does Dag have left?” she asked.

It pleased her to see his eyes narrow. He shifted a little, trying to sit higher, fighting with the cushions beneath him. When she sat beside him and put her hands behind his sweating back he flinched, and he did not relax until she had rearranged him and moved away. “A little more than four,” he whispered. “You have at least nine.”

Cheedo nodded. “I thought so.”

“Dag’s not likely to breed true,” Corpus added. His words seemed to come easier with the pillows supporting his back. “Her last came away quick. She was found out in the wastes. If she wasn’t so pretty, Dad wouldn’t have taken her. You . . .”

“My daughter was perfect,” she agreed.

Corpus was nodding. “If that’s a boy,” he said slowly, pointing a quivering finger at her exposed belly. “He’ll be Joe’s Grandson, my nephew. You and I. We could protect him till he’s old enough to control. We could teach him!”

“Teach him what?” Cheedo asked, planting her hands on her hips. “Teach him your numbers, perhaps? Your moons and cycles?”

The little man balled his fists. “We teach him your ways. You and I.”

She tapped her fingers against her cheek, studying the pitiful wretch before her. “I could teach him my ways myself,” she said. “Call him Joe Reborn. They’d all believe me. Why need I keep you anyway?”

Corpus opened and closed his mouth. He did this a few more times, till she began to wonder if he was choking. “If we put more people in the hydroponics we can feed maybe two hundred and ten,” he said. “Not more.”

Cheedo smiled and returned to the bed. “Here,” she said. “Your legs look they’re sore. Let me show you what Rictus liked.”

 

***

 

In the cool of the black night, their council was called. Toast was one of the last to arrive in the circular vault, and she was pleased to see that Scrap had kept her a large throw pillow on the floor, near to Cheedo’s knee.

She was less pleased to see the creature, Corpus, sitting on Cheedo’s right though. “Am I late?” she asked, circling the many seated women. Scrap and Corpus were the only males there, and Scrap seemed to be there only to keep her pillow by.

She saw Dag sitting with her ankles in the pool, but no sign of Capable. That tugged on her mind in something suspiciously like a worry. She chased it from the matter of her brain with a slight shake of her skull.

“Imperator Toast,” Cheedo said. Her sister was sitting in on the stairs, higher than all the others. The fragile one, Toast thought, or the survivor? Toast bowed her head. “Tell me what you found,” Cheedo said.

What had she found? The skeletons of babies. Cages with things that she had begged her to kill them. A small fleet of broken cars. An antiseed larger than a motorbike. The strength to drive a knife into the throat of a rebellious War Boy. “There are a few War Boys holed up in what was the canteen,” she said, and noted the way the milkers spoke quickly and quietly to one another. “But they don’t know the food isn’t stored there. I’ve left Omidin and some pups there to watch the entrance. If they surrender, I say we send them to the desert with their lives.”

Cheedo clapped her hands together once. “All who agree, say ‘aye’,” she said, so quickly that Toast thought she must have been desperate to try the words.

A small chorus of ‘ayes’ went around the ragged circle.

“Dag, count them,” Cheedo ordered. “Who among us says ‘nay’?”

Markedly fewer said ‘nay’, Tricky among them. The dark haired woman curled her upper lip back to reveal her teeth. “I say kill them now,” she muttered.

“Dag, who wins?”

“The vote is we send them to the desert,” Dag said, sitting back so she could lift her foot half out the pool. She trailed her toe over the water and Toast smiled.

“I found some stores of guzzoline,” Toast continued. They were secured too, where only she and Scrap knew. “And some more medicines I sent to Corpse.”

“Good, good,”  Cheedo was saying. She glanced around the room then, and at the door that stood behind Toast. Toast itched to turn her head but couldn’t, or wouldn’t. She was held by this ragged circle of women. Their Imperator. Whatever lay behind her, she trusted to Cheedo to warn her of. “How many do we have inside the Citadel?” Cheedo asked.

This was not easy. Toast had had to whittle marks in a bone to keep her count. She fingered the worn stub within her pocket. “There are us, the fifteen women, and I include Furiosa and Corpse in that. I estimate we have brought up around eighty of the Wretched. This I add to the seventy six slaves who survived, and they are all together in the slave quarters. To that, I counted another twenty nine sick War Boys, mine own included, but not the rebels. Then we have near fifty pups.”

The women hissed through their teeth and muttered with one another. While Cheedo sat as straight as ever, Toast thought she saw her sister’s eyes stray to the mangled man that sat beside her.

“Thank you, Imperator,” Cheedo said. “Please, come sit.”

Toast couldn’t let it be seen how weary she was, how she was near limping in her overlarge boots. She took the cushion that had been left for her and sat, aware that the women were quiet around her.

Before Cheedo could move on, a newcomer came to the door. It was Corpse, who had shedded none of her road clothes. If anything, she seemed even more armoured since Toast had last seen her when delivering the precious little glass vials she’d found. “Won’t stay,” Corpse said, shaking her hand at the women who had begun to make space for her. In her other hand she held a tin cup, something that stank like piss. Corpse stopped at the pool and stared across its short width at Cheedo. “You wanted this.”

“I did,” Cheedo said.

There was that prickle in Toast’s mind again. She sat forward, intent on the old Vuvalini.

“What’s that for?” Dag asked. She stood to take the cup, her nose wrinkling.

“For babies,” Corpse said. She handed the cup over, without taking her eyes from Cheedo. Then she shook her head. “I need to return to Furiosa,” she said, spinning on her heel and marching away.

“Dag,” Cheedo said in a soft voice. She extended her hand. “Give that to me.”

The creeping cold fingers along Toast’s spine all flattened against her goosepricked skin and she shivered, frowning at her sister. Cheedo sat tall on the stairs and drank the foul smelling concoction in long, slurping glugs. With each swallow she made, Corpus seemed to wheeze harder.

“Now,” Cheedo said, tossing the cup aside. It hit the wall and rang like a bell. Corpus flinched. “With the supplies we have we can feed a little over two hundred. Dag, I need you and some others to start farming, plant your seeds, whatever you need, Toast will get it for you.” She looked round the room, and Toast followed her gaze. The women were rapt, she thought, by this creature who seemed to have found her way back with them from the Road. “Where are the ‘ayes’?” Cheedo asked, and a chorus took it up, only a few of the shrewd ones beside Tricky saying nothing. Cheedo tossed her long braid over her shoulder with a flick of her head. “Now. I need someone to take control of our food. Someone who knows how to ration, how to control. We need a leader in stores. I had thought, perhaps, Capable . . . but she’s not here.”

Toast pressed her lips together to keep from smiling. From the corner of her eye she could see Tricky elbow one of her fellows, and the old woman piped up “Tricky could do that, couldn’t you?”

“The ‘ayes’?” Cheedo asked, and the vote was passed, the margin a little narrower than Toast would have liked. She noticed that Scrap, sitting behind her shoulder, was not passing his vote with the others. Nor was Corpus. The two men in their circle said nothing with each vote.

Cheedo placed a hand on her side and rubbed. Toast did not frown. The black on her forehead would make it too clear. She knew, as did Cheedo, how to hide a face with nothing.

“Then we are all agreed. Tricky, you will do us all proud, I’m sure.” She clapped her hands once again, her lips tight. Slowly each of the old milkers heaved themselves up, drifting away from their ragged circle, through the vault’s open door.

Toast remained seated, Scrap sat by her side. It wasn’t until they were alone with Corpus, Dag and Cheedo that she turned to the old War Boy. “You didn’t vote,” she said quietly.

“No,” he agreed. “Wondered if I could.” With that, he got to his feet. “I’ll be outside,” he said simply, and walked to the door.

Toast lay back on the pillows, each one warm from those who had left them. Cheedo was hissing low through her teeth. “Are you okay?” she mumbled, her eyes already closing.

“Fine. Dag. Take care of Corpus. Please.”

Toast dozed, vaguely aware of Cheedo’s cursing and crying, but she had long ago learned to ignore Cheedo’s sounds in the night.


	7. The Bastard on Your Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are the things men love. Bombs, atoms, guns and gore.
> 
> Not you, the sun, and kisses from above.
> 
> These are not the things men love.

The sound of the water crashing down from its high birth woke her. It had a new noise to it, the swell and gurgle of it gathering in the iron rimmed reservoir.

The reservoir leaked and spat, but it was better than nothing, and Toast closed her eyes again, turning her head.

She couldn’t sleep in the vault, she’d learned, not with Cheedo and her dancing puppet. Dag was spending her days in hydroponics, with her harem of women who cared about seeds, and the slaves and Wretched who liked the green. Capable, with her reservoir built, was undoubtedly now working to improve it.

It was near a whole moon since they had crept on board the War Rig. Toast smiled to herself at the memory. Now she slept in what had been the quarters of Rictus, carved stone with a window that faced the sheer drop. It was cool in the evenings and warm in the nights, and this space was hers. To do with as she willed.

She had stripped her pants and boots the eve before, and lay sprawled out in only her top. She hadn’t stirred once in the night from being too cold, but that was because she’d been practicing all day with Corpse and the rifle. They had eaten lizard stew that night and she had drifted to sleep watching the stars from her window.

Her hand rested upon her thigh and in the warm, sleepy heat, she could have sworn it was not her hand at all, but another’s, someone who hit his mark every time, who knew guns better than she. Her fingers were crawling of their own volition, creeping to the heat between her legs.

There was no metal there, with sharp teeth to deter.

Those teeth were supposed to tear at the cocks of men, until Joe was ready to unlock her. She ran her palm over the mound of flesh, soft where she used to feel chrome, and where there used to be teeth, just heat and silk.

It was like an itch, the more her fingers explored, the more she wanted to scratch.

Their hated metal belts had been pressed upon them by Joe, kept other men from them. As her fingers explored, she felt the realisation dawn like the sun, he’d kept her from herself too.

“Old bastard,” she murmured, rolling to her back. She could feel her muscles flex and contract beneath her fingertips, the silky slick folds between her legs twitching away from her touch, like a part of her she had no control over. There was a hard nub that her fingertips could flick over and produce a shudder from her whole body, shaking her shoulders and her toes.

This might have been what Capable and Nux did together on the dunes, though she thought there might have been a little more to it, because this sensation alone wouldn’t be enough to drive her to build a reservoir in the full heat of the midday sun.

She knew that War Boys would touch themselves. She’d even seen them do it, though not since she’d started wearing the black paint on her forehead.

What if it were Max’s hands? She closed her eyes, trying to picture the Road Warrior with his hand between her legs, but the image kept slipping from her mind, too incongruous and dreamlike. She found it easier to see him as he was on the Road, smeared with dust, hauling a tank of guzzoline over the dunes, a dark patch of sweat spreading down between his shoulders.

Toast let her breath escape in a low moan, pushing down against her hand, and thinking of blue eyes watching her, seeing her in the back of the Rig’s cabin, perhaps. She let her knees drift apart, one hitting the stone wall, the other hanging off the narrow cot, and she sucked on her lip, sliding her fingers slowly back and forwards.

The twitching and shivering every time she hit the sweet spot was as sweet as sneezing dust from her nose, and she pursued it, all her focus on the feeling low in her stomach. It was an arrival sure enough, made her spine curl and her throat growl. The sweet spot was suddenly raw and fiery, and she rolled to her side, her ribs shivering with each breath.

“Old bastard,” she murmured once more, resting her head back on the understuffed pillow.

 

***

 

“There you are.”

The words were a lance through Furiosa’s brain. She didn’t dare open her eyes, so she lifted her hand instead to indicate she’d heard. It weighed as much as her hydraulic arm. She was aware of someone sitting close by, the smell of herbs and blood, and a cool cloth on her forehead.

“Thought you might leave this world,” Corpse said. “Then I’d have been the last of us.”

Furiosa lifted her hand again and felt it gripped by strong fingers. She held on as tightly as she could.

“I reckon you’re over the worst of it. You’ve been having some bad dreams I don’t wonder.” Corpse laid her other hand on top of the cool cloth on Furiosa’s forehead, and then back over her scalp, brushing through her soft hair. “It’s been about three weeks.”

Too long, Furiosa  thought. She opened her mouth and Corpse tutted softly. Another cloth was brought to Furiosa’s lips, this one trickling cool water onto her parched tongue. “First,” Corpse said. “Your girls are still alive. Some of them are even doing well. The one they called the Fragile. She’s taken control. The old fat ones are listening to her, and Toast is mean enough to back her up.”

Cheedo? Furiosa felt as though her lips would split if she exhaled too hard, and she couldn’t bring herself to open her eyes yet. Cheedo in control of the Citadel, Furiosa couldn’t imagine it. But then, if she’d had imagined it, she would have imagined Angharad.

“Capable is grieving.” Corpse’s hands returned to Furiosa’s forehead and her voice went soft. “Reminds me of the time Valkyrie lost her little Pet, she cried herself to sleep for near on a year. She had built a reservoir though, and I think today she’s trying to make it drain. Not sure how. The Dag seems to want to join the Wretched. She’s even slept down there with them. Toast makes some of her War Boys stay down and watch. The one they put in charge of the canteen is a little despot, but we’re eating and drinking.”

Furiosa managed to nod, just once.

“You should sleep, without dreams. Rest up.” Corpse brushed her thumb over Furiosa’s forehead. “There’s a wind brewing out there.”

“That storm’s been your friend for years,” Max said. He stood against the rail between the water pumps, his arms braced against the chrome. In her dream, he always wore white, a shirt as pale and white as the clothes she used to wear as a wife.

Furiosa approached him and let her hand trail over the small of his back, noting the way his head bowed, the way his eyes tracked her approach. She leaned against his shoulder, looking down at those below.

In her dreams, the Citadel didn’t spill water but blood, tides of crimson crashing down from the tower’s gaping maw, and the desert below was a sea, churning with black oil and blood. “I’m not supposed to dream,” she said.

“Me neither,” he agreed, turning his head to press a kiss against the side of her head, the flutter of his lips blossoming to a pain in her temples, like a fist against her skull.

The hand she had on his back was oozing blood onto his top, the white turning red. She watched her flesh peel away, the bones fall to the stone, till the hand on his back was metal, and his shirt was a plastic simile of musculature. If she looked at his face it would be Joe’s mask grinning back at her.

Joe and Max. She was never sure who she’d see in her dreams.

 

***

 

“Is it finished?”

Capable planted her hands on her hips and eyed the metal walls of the reservoir. Car doors, broken hulls and piecemeal bulkheads that were all welded together, curving around the old fall-bed of the water. They’d replaced the rocks on the bed but sand and silt still got stirred up whenever the water was turned on. Still, the Wretched were kissing her hands wherever she walked. “It doesn’t leak anymore,” she said to the pup by her side, “it’s something.”

The pup gave her a nervous grin, revealing yellowed and cracked teeth. “Can we eat?” he asked.

Capable smiled. “Yes. Go eat,” she laughed at the little boys as they fled their work, cheering and shouting as they scampered over the rocks and desert. Her gaze followed them until she saw Dag on the approach. The Wretched parted and milled around the tall woman, like the swirl and eddy of water in her new reservoir. Capable watched her sister like she might watch an insect on a branch, a world so close and so uninhabitable to Capable that it might as well have been a picture, rather than something she could reach out and touch.

“Is it finished, then?” Dag asked, kicking her toe against a hunk of rusted metal, but gently. The reservoir would sooner break Dag’s toe than its own seals.

“For now,” agreed Capable. She linked arms with Dag and walked to the shade of the Citadel’s towers, where a small camp of Wretched had made them feel very welcome in the long middays. Dag had spent the morning drawing lines in the sand, the Wretched following along behind her and planting stones in her wake. “What is this?” Capable asked, pointing to the long rows.

“I want to see if the soil is sour,” Dag said, shading her eyes with her palm as she looked at her creation. The pups were playing over it, chasing each other over the rows of stones. "We'll plant the seeds we can spare. The ones we have plenty of. See if they take" Dag lowered her hand and turned to Capable. "What will you build now?"

Capable had asked herself the same thing that very morning and couldn't say she rightly knew. A bridge, she thought, like the one that linked two of the Citadel’s towers. Or steps to zig zag up the red stone face. She remembered Miss Giddy saying there used to be steps, before, but it might have been from a dream. She shrugged and sat heavily on the stone, Dag joining her, with a little more caution.

"Build a way to get the water to there." Dag pointed to her dust farm.

Capable tossed a pebble into the air and watched it spiral through the air and land in the dust with a puff of yellow. "It would be pipes I think. That start high and go down. That would work."

Dag smiled and picked up a pebble of her own, tossing it from their stone platform to the dirt below.

"How's the baby?" Capable asked, furrowing her brow at the next pebble she held in her hand.

Dag shrugged. "Doesn't feel any different. It will be ugly. Little Joe."

Capable eyed the Wretched escort who were never far from Dag's side. "You shouldn't call it that." She said quietly. "The Wretched listen to every word you say."

Dag stuck out her lower lip and scowled at her attendants.

"I bled this morning," Capable said, without quite meaning to.

Dag turned the frown on her instead. "You wanted Nux" she said, as though testing the words out.

"Wanted ..." Capable didn't know. It would have been more than a witness to the War Boy. A child would have been something ... new. Something built by her and Nux.

Or something shrivelled and broken.

"Did you love him?" Dag asked abruptly. She was dropping a pebble into the stone. Over and over. Each time she picked it up and released it, a soft clink echoed through the air.

"It's not like a baby," Capable chose her words carefully. "Not like you're going to die from the hurt of it." She lay back on the stones. "But not like I love you either."

"Was it nice? When you went and lay on the sand together?"

Capable shivered. The sun baked stone against her back was welcome. "It was ... hopeful. Maybe. I don't really know. Not like Joe."

"Sounds hopeful to me."

"Cheedo got rid of her baby. You could make yours come away to. Then you wouldn't carry _him_ on your back."

"But I will. Even if the baby comes away tomorrow. It is little Joe. I can't say otherwise to make the Wretched feel safe." Dag dropped the pebble for the last time and lay down beside her, staring into her eyes.

Capable said nothing. Not even that she would have felt safer if her sister could pick some other name. It wasn't that she believed. At least she didn't think she believed. It wasn't Joe resting in Dag’s belly. Not really. Just half of him.

That half was frightening enough.

A warbling cry went up from the outskirts of the colony, taken up by each of the wretched in turn. "Cars are coming!" One if the old ones said, Hocking as quickly as old legs would allow towards her precious Dag. "Hide! Cars!"

"I don't hide," Capable said, scrambling to her feet. She reached down to help Dag up and together they squinted at the tiny cloud of dust on the road.

“Go!” one of the Wretched hissed. “They’ll not bother us, go! Go!”

The platform was already descending and Capable’s pups were running toward her, their eyes wide and voices shrill. Dag leaned in closer, “maybe we just go up together,” she whispered, “the Wretched can hide here. We can’t.”

Capable swore.

 

***

 

"Gastown finally dried up then," Scrap said sounding more amused than anything else.

Furiosa squinted in the dim light of the old watchtower. In her dreams, this was where Max most often lurked. She half expected to see him standing in the thin white t-shirt, lurking behind the others, blue eyes watching her. The room was different from what she remembered. The pups and milking mothers had ripped the skulls from the walls, and the Wretched had been leaving gifts around the water pumps, strange things like twisted metal and fragments of bone.

A pup had run to tell Corpse about the visitors while Furiosa was in one of her brief waking moments, and she had insisted her old friend half carry her to where Cheedo and her sisters were receiving the Gastown convoy. Now she sat behind Cheedo, and wasn’t sure if she’d be able to stand when the Gastown drivers left. She might just stay here.

Or die here.

Furiosa had been betrayed by her body before. It was not so frightening to feel as though she could not walk, could not fight, could not shoot. She’d felt that before, and worse. Her mind though, her mind had never tried so hard to trick her. When others spoke of dreams and nightmares, she had only slept in darkness.

Toast was dressed like her. She supposed it was a compliment, though for some reason seeing the black mark on the girl felt like another nightmare. Cheedo’s Imperator stood closest to the Gastown envoy, her hand resting on the pistol at her hip.

“Is Toast . . .?” she began, and Scrap leaned over so she wouldn’t have to talk so loud.

“Exactly like you were, a few years ago. Angry little thing. Stared old Omen Owen in the face and told him to shoot her.”

That was enough to make her stomach clench. She thought, for a moment, Max was standing beside Toast, watching Furiosa with accusing eyes.

Cheedo, Dag and Capable were the centre of the room though. Capable had braided her thick red hair in a crown around her head, her face and arms streaked with dirt. She had her arms tightly folded against her chest and leaned close to Dag. Of all the women, Dag was the only one to still wear white. She had also forgone raiding the War Boys’ wardrobe, and her silvery hair still cascaded down her back. Except, Furiosa couldn’t help but notice, the Dag’s fingers were dirty. Earth beneath the prize’s fingernails. Take that, you old bastard.

It was Cheedo who was the most changed. She might have been sharing Furiosa’s dreams for the grey circles beneath her eyes. She was all grey and black, Furiosa thought, a wraith waiting to receive a bounty.

The Gastown men had relinquished their guns to reach the inner sanctum of the Citadel. They’d left half of their party – five men, another part of Furiosa’s mind noted – down below with the barrels of guzzoline they’d brought to trade.

“We want Aqua Cola,” announced their self-elected a leader. A tall, brawny man whose shaved skull was scarred and scabbed. He had a good two heads of height on Toast, and stood almost shoulder to shoulder with her, each facing the opposite party.

Furiosa wished for strength.

She wished for guns.

She wished for eyesight that didn’t waver with her heartbeat, or see the Road Warrior in every shaft of sunlight.

Cheedo seemed to wake, a smile spreading across her generous lips, one shoulder dipping. It was as though she were looking at Joe. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you, _I want never gets_?”

Furiosa smiled before remember her bruised and fragile lips. It was worth the pain though.

“You slackjawed-” the insult fell away as the sound of Toast’s gun barrel scraping on her leather pants seemed to echo throughout the chamber. The Imperator and trader shared a long look and finally he sneered, an ugly and dark sight. “We’ve brought guzzoline.”

“So we see,” Cheedo said.  “You may empty your tanks to ours, and refill with water from the reservoir.”

The Gastown boy looked around the room and snorted. “Omen Owen told me you were just a group of girls. Said you killed old Immortan Joe though.”

Furiosa wondered if he knew the old bastard was standing right behind him.

“We are as you see,” Cheedo inclined her head.

“What about the milk?” the Gastown boy demanded.

“We don’t do that anymore.”

The flash in the Gastown boy’s eyes made Furiosa’s chest tighten, but her body couldn’t respond faster than the spectre of Joe who reached out to touch the back of the Gastown boy’s head.

But it wasn’t Furiosa who moved first, it was the Imperator on her feet. It was Toast, whose gun was drawn and smoking even before Scrap, the other War Boys and even some of the milkers had their guns drawn.

The Gastown boy leapt back from the scorched dirt, his companions backing up, their eyes wide. Furiosa felt the desert had come to rest in her mouth.

“Take the water,” Cheedo’s voice rang out. “Leave the guzzoline. And we can speak again some time.”

Toast was congratulating her warriors, reassuring the old milkers who had drawn their weapons, slapping palms with the War Boys who still murmured things like ‘chrome’ and ‘witness’ as she passed. She and Scrap exchanged a look before she approached her sisters and Furiosa. “The water they’ll take won’t last them long,” she murmured.

Furiosa shook her head. “No,” she agreed.

“We need a Rig,” Toast said. “We need to supply Gastown and the Bullet Farm more regularly, if we don’t want them turning on us. We wouldn’t survive a siege forever.”

“You know what that means,” Scrap said, looking at Furiosa, while the Road Warrior lurked behind him, basking in the sun.

Furiosa nodded, letting her eyes close. “It means we go to the Yard.”

In the shaft of sunlight, she thought the Road Warrior might have winced.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure why the one-sided Toast/Max appeals to me quite as much as it does, but damn . . .


	8. The Band Played

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is what men think. Of wet, repose, soft and thrust. 
> 
> Of love and mother, men never link.
> 
> This is what men think.

Little Joe was kicking her. Dag lay on the floor of the greenhouse, staring up at the leaves, and felt her baby turn and roil beneath her skin.

I am not a thing, but I _am_ a vessel.

She swallowed roughly, wishing little Joe would stop. Angharad used to sing to the babies in their bellies, and it would work. But Dag had no voice for it. At least every time she opened her mouth to sing her sisters would shriek in horror and swat at her thighs, laughing at her efforts. Dag had never heard the difference herself.

I am not a thing, but I _am_ a breeder.

Little Joe was angry at something. Perhaps he was coming away. It was possible, for sure. She’d lost her first late. She had woken in the night with a wetness between her thighs and she had wept so bitterly. Angharad had refused to leave her, even when Joe was threatening to break every bone in her body for losing him his son. _She mourns your son,_ Angharad had spat so fiercely even Joe had retreated.

I am not a thing, but I _am nothing else_ either.

“Dag?”

Her eyes screwed shut and she clenched her fists tight, almost too afraid to speak.

“Dag, they’re looking for you, are you in here?”

The heavy footsteps paused and Dag opened her eyes to see one of the old wives staring at her. “What are you doing on the floor, Dag?” she asked, as though it was normal to find things lying about on the ground.

“The baby is kicking,” Dag murmured, splaying her hand on her rounded stomach.

“Ah,” said the woman. She had discarded the name Joe had given her, and chosen another. Dag couldn’t remember it. Something pretty. The woman settled on the ground beside her, propping up her head with her curved arm. “I will sit with you then.”

“Are they leaving for the Yard?” Dag whispered.

“Yes. But it’s fine if you want to wait here.”

Dag stared up at the glass ceiling. “I think I do,” she mumbled.

“Then here we stay,” agreed the woman affably.

“Thank you,” Dag whispered.

 

***

 

The road was long. The sun was high. Her arm was heavy, resting on the door of the car.

Furiosa felt at peace for the first time in moons.

The light on the road was harsh and glaring, softened only by the black shadow of her warpaint. There was no soft sunbeams for a ghost to lurk, not here. Only a road that would ever rise up beneath her wheels.

She stretched a little in her chair, careful of the ache in her ribs where Toast had caught her a sharp blow during their training last week. At over a head shorter, the younger woman had to learn how to fight dirty from the younger pups, and Furiosa had always been sure never to go easy on her.

She just hadn’t quite expected little Toast to start giving back quite so soon. She blamed her injuries and infections, which were only almost healed. She even wanted to blame her lack of a metal arm, and had had another commissioned.

Truth be told, all that was pride. Out here, on the road, pride was as like to get you killed. The truth was . . . Toast was fierce.

She glanced at her companion from the corner of her eye. Toast had one boot up on the dash of the sand buggy, her head back against the chair, her eyes closed. She’d learned the art of snatching sleep too, Furiosa saw, and the flicker of pride returned to Furiosa’s chest.

She checked her mirrors, a reflex, and counted four cars behind them. Toast’s favourite driver, the hunched and sick Rev, was in the Valiant, the other cars driven and guarded by the boys Toast trusted most.

It had taken all of three moons to get this small war party together, and for Furiosa to walk on her own two feet. Even then, if their scouts hadn’t seen the trail of dust leaving Gastown last night they may have waited longer. The Yard was a long week’s drive from the Citadel, and Furiosa was not expecting a warm welcome from the Yard Master either.

Scrap and the remaining War Boys would have to be enough protection for those still at the Citadel. She would just have to drive fast.

“Come home,” Max said from the gaping jaws in the sandstone.

She shook her head to clear it.

“Please,” his whispers echoed around in her skull.

She was standing in the jaws of the skull, the one thing the milkers couldn’t hack away. Joe’s own legacy. Max ran his hands lightly up her arms, cupping her face. “You come back to us.”

“Well _you_ left _us_ ,” she whispered.

Toast woke with a start. “What?” she asked, her hand on her gun.

“Nothing,” Furiosa murmured, staring ahead at the sun.

“Hmm,” Toast said, settling back in her chair and squinting out at the yellow road. “You do that a lot,” she said after a moment.

“What.”

“Say nothing.” Toast looked at her and shrugged, a strange smile playing on her lips. “You say a lot of nothing these days.”

Furiosa reached to adjust the straps of her arm, letting the metal weight hold the wheel steady.

Toast kicked her feet back up onto the dash. “How’s your side?” Her words brimmed with suppressed laughter and Furiosa scowled.

“Fine.”

“Sure it is,” Toast said. “Maybe we can spar when we break.”

“We won’t be breaking,” Furiosa said, almost resisting the urge to rub her bruised ribs. Toast laughed.

“Well, sooner we get there the sooner we’ll be back, I suppose,” Toast said. “I wish we’d said goodbye to Dag.”

“I know,” Furiosa said quietly. “That’s what it is to be Imperator, though. You are the one who leaves the safe walls behind, to keep those walls safe.”

“What do we do if we can’t bargain for a rig?” Toast asked, just as quiet.

“I don’t know.”

 

***

 

“You need to get up from the ground.”

“Don’t think I want to.”

Standing above her, Corpse planted her fists on her hips and huffed in exasperation. “This is just silliness. You can’t lie on the floor all day.”

“Why not?” Dag asked. She traced circles in the dirt with her fingers.

“Well . . .” Corpse looked at Cheedo, and then back at Dag. “It’s not what we do,” she said after a moment.

Dag shook her head. “I want to stay.” She splayed her hand over the rise of her stomach.

“Hmm.” Corpse crouched down beside her and ran her fingers over the taut skin. “Fair enough,” she husked, low in her throat.

“But,” Cheedo began, only to be silenced by Capable’s hand on her arm.

“Would you let us get you a pillow, at least?” Corpse asked.

Dag considered it for a few heartbeats. “I like the dirt.”

 

***

 

“There’s no better feeling than driving a Rig,” Furiosa said from the passenger seat.

Toast drove with a light hand, the heel of her palm resting on the apex of the wheel. It was a familiar sight, somehow, too much like Max for a coincidence. “None in the world?” Toast asked, her gaze flitting to the mirrors reflecting the night.

Furiosa shook her head. “None.” The little sand buggy bounced over the clay baked road, the lights casting ghoulish shadows ahead of them.

“I find that hard to believe.” Toast arched her back against the seat, settling back down into a more comfortable position. “Popping a boomer at five hundred strides. That feels pretty good.”

Furiosa smiled. “The Rig is better,” she confided, arching her brows when Toast scoffed. “When you reach up and pull that horn, and your escort and outriders gather round. Oh . . .”

“What about . . . sneezing when your nose is full of dust.”

“Better.”

“Ha. Stretching. When you’ve been in the driver’s seat for a whole day.”

Furiosa shook her head, grinning. “Still better. The sound of that horn, the call of that engine. Nothing in the world.”

“What about . . .” Toast trailed off, running her fingertips along the frame of the wheel. “What about killing old Joe.”

“It’s not even on the same scale.”

“Hmmm.”

“When you drive our Rig home to the Citadel, you’ll see.”

“What about coming?” Toast asked suddenly. She grinned at Furiosa’s wide eyes. “It can’t be better than that, surely.”

Furiosa could almost feel Max’s smile at the base of her skull, where Joe’s brand still itched. She shivered. “How would you know?” she asked, curiously.

“Been practicing,” Toast said, “been practicing guns, knives, wheels and me.”

“Well?” Max asked against her ear. She reached up to brush the lobe, to shake away the prickle of his stubble against her neck.

“I wouldn’t know,” she murmured, watching the road rise into their light. She could feel Toast’s gaze on her. There were other things to do, she wanted to say, I didn’t have the time to practice me. I just practiced survival.

She could see Max, standing in a shaft of sunlight in the Citadel.

“Well. I recommend practicing,” Toast said softly. “We can compare.”

 

***

 

Corpus and Cheedo were hunched over the books when Scrap appeared at the Vault’s door, his head bowed low. “Cheedo, miss, there’s something,” he said quickly, glancing back over his shoulders. “Down near Corpse’s Ward. Corpse found it . . .”

“Found what?” Cheedo asked, glancing at Corpus. He seemed as confused as she.

Scrap ran his palm over his head where he had begun to let his hair grow. “Cheedo .  . . there’s been a murder.”

It was an old word. It dragged at Cheedo’s thoughts as she marched down the rough hewn corridors. Murder. The act of taking a life, unlawfully. Without sanction. Where did an old War Boy learn such a word?

There was a small, small part of her, walking with her escort of brooding War Boys, that kept running the phrase around and around. Without sanction. Without sanction. Without sanction. That sanction should have been hers.

No one dies here without my say.

Scrap wouldn’t let her enter Corpse’s Ward before he’d sent a younger man ahead, and he stayed by her side until the all clear was given. Corpse was crouched over the dead body, a twisted slave, Cheedo noted immediately, and Corpse clucked her tongue when Cheedo approached. “Definitely killed,” she said, hauling the body over onto its front and revealing a jagged wound on his left hand side. “Stabbed in the back. Bled out in the corridor.”

Cheedo stared at the body, loosely clenching and unclenching her fists. After a moment, she looked at Scrap, Capable, and Corpse standing around her. “What do we do?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” Capable breathed, transfixed as Cheedo was by the dead body.

“We find out who did it,” Scrap said into the silence. “And we protect you three.”

Cheedo could feel the flutter of fear settle atop her heartbeat. She looked to Capable. “Is Dag still in the greenhouse?”

She could see Capable’s mouth had gone as dry as hers, the tip of Capable’s tongue tasting her lips. “I think so.”

“Scrap, who do you trust?”

“Omidin.”

Cheedo nodded. “He’s to guard her. With his life.”

“Can we ask that?” Capable asked, her head jerking up. When Corpse and Scrap looked at her she lifted her jaw higher. “Their lives are not our cannon fodder. Or our shields.”

“They like her,” Scrap offered, though he sounded uncertain.

“No . . .” Cheedo wished she had the words for the frustration bubbling within her.  “Capable’s right. He can volunteer, if you ask him.”

“Ask . . . ?” Scrap repeated, scratching at the hair growing on his scalp. Corpse snorted through her hooked nose.

“I’ll sit with Dag,” Capable said, “until we have volunteers.”

Cheedo nodded. “And I will find out who did this. Start by talking to the slaves.”

“I’ll be with you,” Scrap said, and when she looked at him he clasped his hands above his head quickly, “And I volunteer, I swear by the V8. But you are not going anywhere in this Citadel without me.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Corpse?”

“I’ll be here.” Corpse shrugged, patting the dead body. “There are things the dead can give us.” She revealed her teeth when she smiled.

Not without my say. Cheedo waited for Scrap to escort her, but it was she who led the way to through the darkened corridors of stone.

 

***

 

She didn’t spend all her day on the floor. Even she needed to eat. To piss. The others in the greenhouse would talk, the boys whispering to one another about a ghost that roamed the corridors beyond, cutting and stabbing at innocents.

There were never fewer than half a dozen former War Boys in the greenhouse. When Dag lay on the floor, watching the green fronds dance in the breeze, the boys whispered to one another.

Boys talk too, she learned. Somehow, she’d thought that was just women.

Boys talked differently, she learned. They didn’t hide their meaning, didn’t fear their own thoughts. Dag listened and traced the kicking of Little Joe with her forefinger. This might be how he talked, her little warlord, her little Joe.

Or he might talk in threats and pain, like Joe.

Dag had been but a girl when they’d found her in the wasteland. She couldn’t remember much of it. No mother. No father.

Her last had died inside her, come away covered in blood. The Organic Mechanic had said she wasn’t a true breeder, wasteland scum, pretty as she was.

But Joe would give them all chances. Chances to be grateful. Chances to breed.

If it weren’t for Angharad and her words, Dag might have even believed it. Instead, she knew enough to know. She knew the baby inside her was ugly. She knew what boys became. She knew this one would break her, before her body broke it.

“Tunk said the ghost is driving around the Citadel.”

“What?”

“Tunk saw the ghost on watch. Driving on the horizon.”

“In circles.”

“No.”

“Can ghosts drive?”

“Tunk said . . . Tunk said the car is one of me Immortan Joe’s.”

“The old bastard’s dead.”

“Me Immortan Joe’s coming back. Tunk said.”

“Ssssh.”

“She’ll hear.”

“Or Cheedo will.”

“I’m just saying what Tunk said.”

Dag listened to their words echoing between the beansprouts and grains. Once every now and then a pain shuddered from between her legs and crept across her belly.

And little Joe would kick.

 

***

 

They took the long road in.

Furiosa had travelled it only once before, long before Joe bestowed the title of Imperator, and the gift of her arm, and her memory was only hazy. When the road dropped away beneath them, the clay hills rolling away, she heard Toast’s sharp intake of breath mirror her own.

The Yard was an impressive beast even in the twilight, high brick walls glittering with lights and guns, the ruins of the buildings from before scattered in the dust. But it was that which was inside the Yard that really snatched the air from Furiosa’s lungs.

There were cars uncounted, rigs too, even tanks and flatbeds, a bristle of bikes, and in the middle of all that . . . the tower with its great claw arm, poised above a spitting slag pit.

“By the V8,” Toast whispered.

“We’re not alone,” Furiosa said, pointing a metal claw at a party of cars parked outside the Yard’s great gates. “Gastown boys.”

“And Bullet Farm.” Toast pointed to the far side of the ruined town, where campfires cast the second party of cars in flickering relief.

“We were too slow,” Furiosa’s knuckles whitened on the wheel.

Toast extended her hand out the window, gesturing for their escort to drive ahead. “We still have something to trade,” she said, sitting back with a thump. All the same, she reached for her pistol.

The sand buggy’s engine idled at the top of the hill and Furiosa studied the Yard beneath them. “Whatever happens,” she whispered, “don’t forget . . . you are not something to be traded.”

Toast’s fingers flexed on the grip of her pistol. While their outriders drove ahead, their rear guard remained with them, the gentle chug of engines thudding between Furiosa’s legs. “Is that the voice of experience?”

Furiosa swallowed. “Last time we were here . . .” she murmured, “we were looking for the Big Foot. Came away with a few more too. An Elvis. A Firecracker. He held me down. I was supposed to be left with him. But I wouldn’t stay. He thought I’d bite his cock off. Think I would have. Only had one arm but . . .  was sick from the fever of it. We came back with the Big Foot, and Joe said I could be one of his War Boys. I think it was his idea of a joke. I was a child.”

Toast’s hand covered hers and she looked over to the younger woman, surprised to find tears gathering in the corner of her eyes. Toast leaned closer. “Fuck. Him. Fuck Joe. Fuck the Yard Master. Fuck them all. I’ll put a bullet in his skull before he moves.”

That was a truth, if ever Furiosa had heard one. She smiled, or bared her teeth at least, and jammed the gearstick into first, the sand buggy jumping forwards down the hill.

The Yard was waiting.

 

***

 

They were cheering.

When Capable woke, the sound struck her like a fist.

She followed the slaves, the milkers and the boys who were a horde in the corridors, followed on silent feet that fell into the echoes of other peoples’ boots. The scarf that she wrapped over her blood red crown was the same dusty yellow that seemed to seep through the pores of the Citadel, staining the boys that were once white, staining the skin of the slaves, and staining the white of her cloth.

She was unseen in the Vault, where the great Tricky held a tiny creature between her palms. “This!” the old wife pronounced, “is the murderer.”

Capable remained pressed between two of the Wretched, watching her sister’s lack of reaction. There was something of Angharad in Cheedo, she thought. Something of her beloved sister’s thoughts, something of her secrets and the other things that had made the Splendid Angharad the favourite of all Immortan Joe’s wives.

The murderer was weeping between Tricky’s meaty paws, and even when questioned, he said nothing. Instead he threw himself at Cheedo’s feet and clung to her ankles. While he begged, Tricky began to describe to the crowd how they would wreak their vengeance from the murderer’s body.

Capable pulled her scarf lower over her forehead and slipped away. She left the vault behind, left that place that had once been both prison and home.

Where once, Angharad had kissed her cheeks and promised she’d be free. Where once, Miss Giddy had sat beside her on the stool, and their fingers had chased over the piano’s ivory keys. Where once, Toast had sang and Cheedo had followed.

It was not all darkness and fear in that vault. Cheedo could hold those ideas and still hold her black memories in her other hand.

Capable had only two hands. With one she held the black, and the other she held her memories of Nux. There was no room in her grasp for those good things. No room for Toast’s voice following the ivory keys, _Now those that were living did their best to survive, in that mad world of death, blood and fire._

“Capable.”

She paused in one of the corridors, before she pulled her scarf down from her head. Scrap couldn’t be fooled by such a thing. “Yes?”

The old former War Boy stepped closer. “That car that’s been circling the Citadel. The one with Old Joe’s paint . . .” Scrap had long since stopped dusting his skin, but his face was pale when he stared her down. “It’s coming closer.”

_We stopped to bury our slain. We buried ours and the Turks buried theirs. Then we started all over again._

“Then we should go,” she said. The heft of a rifle between her hands might be enough.

Enough to keep Toast’s voice from her skull.

Enough to keep Nux’s hands from her hips.

Enough . . . just enough.

 

***

 

It was not so different from what Furiosa remembered.

They left their cars with a group of trusted boys, Rev the leader among them, on the western side of the Yard’s wall. Furiosa, Toast, and half a dozen War Boys raised their hands in the furiously bright light of the watchtower, ready to be searched. They were led by men and boys tattooed in the way of the Yard Master’s style, the names and badges of cars littering their bodies like scrap.

Furiosa took the lead when they entered the tower. It didn’t surprise her to see the Gastown boy-leader, the man who had fled from their parley. He and his supporters sat on low benches around the fireplace, already sweet and rowdy from the white liquor that was being passed around in tin cups.

Direct opposite them sat the party from the Bullet Farm. Disfigured, ugly boys, their skin black-marked with powder burns and sun burns. They abstained from the tin cups – Omen Owen’s beliefs, Furiosa remembered. Liquor was not favoured in the Bullet Farm.

Furiosa came to a stop in front of the fire, looking up to the small room, partitioned from the tower’s main chamber by corrugated iron. Only a small and broken window offered a view of the room below, and Furiosa waited, Toast  by her side, and boys by her back.

Step upon step.

The Yard Master exited his office.

The chatter of men subsided.

And Furiosa looked up upon the man who held their fate in his palm.

His boots were the same, black leather buckled with chrome. His thick fingers still stained with oil, hands that had held the back of her skull. And the leering smile had not changed in over three thousand days.

“Now our party is complete,” the Yard Master said, low, like a stalling engine. “Let those negotiations begin.”

 

***

 

The pain was near regular now, a blunt jab in her side, every eight hundred heart beats, her body clenched and held her core. It was a grip so strong, Dag thought it might rip her body apart.

That would be fitting, for Little Joe to carve his way into the world by slitting her belly.

Angharad . . . by all the gods she’d ever named, she missed her sister more than she ever knew. The dirt, her close ally these past few moons, was now only the bed beneath her back. She needed her sister. Her beloved, splendid Angharad.

The boys around her had spoken, of the coming of Immortan Joe, the Joe who could never die.

Little Joe squeezed and wrenched her insides.

The boys around her whispered of Immortan Joe, the Lord who would return.

Let him, Dag thought, tears falling from her cheeks to the dust.

She almost didn’t hear the footsteps towards her, nor feel Corpse’s hands upon her shoulders.

“Ohhh,” said a voice. “There.”

The hands upon her were not just Corpse.

“The baby is coming,” the old Vuvalini murmured.

“I’ve seen this before.”

Dag opened her eyes, to meet the blue gaze of something entirely new. Someone new, at least in this space. She let her hand reach out for his.

“There, Dag,” Max murmured. “Hold my hand. There it is.”

Little Joe was coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Went and saw Mad Max for the third time and picked up on even more from the movie, like the baby grand in the vault, and the priceless look Furiosa and Max exchange in the bog when Nux starts driving. Perfect film is perfect.
> 
> This chapter's music comes from the song 'And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda' https://youtu.be/cZqN1glz4JY


	9. Protector

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is how men feel. Brave, iron, strong and bold. 
> 
> Not afraid or weak, nor nothing real.
> 
> This is how men feel.

“Furiosa,” growled the Yard Master. “The days have passed, and you are still living.”

She took a step forward, keeping her stride relaxed, her hips swinging. It was the way boys walked, and she had made a long habit of studying their ways. She came to a stop beside a bench populated by a few young lads from Gastown.

They’re all young, she thought, scanning the room. Only the young ones could make the drive, and the old and sick are back home. Like ours.

“You’re on my seat,” she said, and the Gastown boys didn’t have the spine to stay. Instead they scampered, much to their leader’s irritation. Furiosa sat on the bench, Toast and their rear guard following. The outriders remained standing, or lounged elsewhere. The Citadel’s boys had always known how to intimidate others.

“And who have you brought me?” The Yard Master tilted his head when he looked at Toast. The days had been kind to the brute, he was just as strong and broad shouldered as he had been when she’d known him. His hair a little greyer perhaps, new ink along his wrists perhaps.

One of the War Boys behind them scoffed. “Only ferals don’t know Imperator Toast,” he said, and when the attention of the whole room was on the boy, Furiosa studied the Yard Master. “Imperator Toast defeated Omen Owen with a look. The old man pissed his pants.  She chased off the Gastown boys with one shot.”

The offended parties were booing, so the War Boy got louder as he spoke. Furiosa returned the Yard Master’s steady gaze. “Imperator Toast killed Immortan Joe,” she said.

“Which makes me wonder why I have no drink,” Toast said flatly, and the Yard Master grinned in such a way that Furiosa felt her heart go tight.

“Ellie,” the Yard Master turned to someone in the office and clicked his fingers. After a moment, a young woman crept into view, clutching a battered tin tray, balancing rattling cups and a clay beaker on top. The woman’s bare feet gingerly crept down the iron stairs, her gaze concentrated on her tray and nothing else. The boys from the Bullet Farm refused to lean back or tuck their legs beneath the bench, forcing Ellie to walk closer to the fire to keep from spilling her drink.

Furiosa could feel Toast simmering beside her and she pressed her leg up against Toast’s, boots brushing. When Ellie offered them a drink, Toast said thank you, as pleasantly as any wife might.

The Yard Master remained on high, watching all. As his wife returned to him, he stopped her to get himself a drink. “To the great Imperator Toast, then,” he said, raising the tin to the ceiling. “So what have you come to offer me, ladies?”

 

***

 

Capable’s fingers were still shaking.

The bullet from her rifle had rebounded off the roof of the Pursuit Special, before she’d seen the man who’d stepped out, hands raised. They had ushered Max toward the Citadel, and he had popped the trunk to reveal his treasures.

Cheedo barely blinked at the sack of precious grain, or at the man they hadn’t see in over a hundred and fifty days. Instead she’d grabbed Capable’s quivering hands. “Dag’s baby’s coming.”

Capable knelt beside her sister’s head and held Dag’s hand. When Dag squeezed Capable’s knuckles together, it was the only time Capable wasn’t shaking like the leaves dangling above them.

“Regular now, and she’s beginning to open,” Corpse said in her low voice.

“Hmm.” Max had chosen to sit on the floor and let Dag rest her back against his front, her head against his chest. He smoothed Dag’s hair like he would stroke a dog, and when Dag squeezed her other hand around his, he hummed softly into the platinum strands.

“Keep breathing, Dag,” Corpse said.

“Slow and shallow,” Capable chimed in. “You know how to do this.”

“No,” Dag moaned and screwed her eyes shut, digging the back of her skull into Max’s chest.

“Yes you can,” Capable’s voice broke and Max frowned at her. She studied the intertwined fingers instead. Hands that had been so quick to pull the trigger.

If her aim had been truer, Max would be bleeding out on the sand.

“Please . . .” Dag sobbed softly, then hissed as her body contracted again. The ripples over her belly drawing the gaze of everyone in the room, from the War Boys around the walls, the women who circled them, passing comment, to Corpse and Cheedo kneeling at Dag’s feet, and Max and Capable at her head. Only Dag didn’t see it, her eyes still squeezing out fat tears at slow intervals.

“Baby is coming no matter what,” Corpse said. She ran her hand over Dag’s crooked knee. “So you take it out on us.”

“You know how to do this, you’ve done it for me,” Capable whispered. She stroked the back of Dag’s hand and offered a smile when her sister turned her head to meet her gaze. “You can do it.”

“It will be ugly,” was Dag’s complaint. She released Max’s hand and reached for Capable’s cheek. “Don’t make me.” While Capable could only lean into her touch, she noticed Max shift his spare hand to rub the small of Dag’s back. Dag moaned again, closing her eyes, but this time arching into the touch.

“Your own baby is never ugly,” Max announced, and when Dag made a whine of protest, he hummed low in his throat. “Never,” he promised again.

“Max has the right of it,” Corpse agreed. “And I should know, I delivered Valkyrie and she was the ugliest little thing you ever saw.”

“No?” Capable smiled. Corpse didn’t speak much about her fallen sisters, just as Capable didn’t speak much of Angharad, she supposed.

“Oh yes,” Corpse washed her hands in a basin brought by one of the milkers. She shook droplets of water onto the fabric beneath Dag’s hips. “And an ugly child too. Always running in the sun with a matt of that black hair. Wasn’t till she became a woman that she became beautiful. Suddenly the traders wanted to talk to her. But Valkyrie’s mother? She had always known how beautiful her daughter was. Mothers always know. You’re going to want to push soon, Dag.”

Dag shook her head. But as the next contraction squeezed her belly, her moans turned to frantic puffs.

“Good, I see a head,” Corpse said in a reverent whisper, “You are doing so well.”

For a moment, Capable’s attention was captured by one of the boys standing at the wall. His hands were over his mouth, and his neighbour rubbing his shoulder. She wondered if they had ever seen the bloody fight for life like this before? The Wretched, yes, the other women standing with their pale faces and drawn lips, yes, but the boys? Did they know how hard it was to start life’s engine?

“One more big push, Dag, that’s all we need,” Corpse’s whisper seemed to float on Dag’s exhausted gasps. While Max hummed under his breath, pressing a kiss into the top of Dag’s head.

The push came, along with Dag’s grunt of pain, and a cheer went around the room, followed not long after by the slap of Corpse’s hand against pink flesh and an indignant wail.

“There you are,” Max said, rocking gently back and forwards. Capable glanced at him, met his gaze, and she released Dag’s hands, crawling to where Corpse and Cheedo were hunched over the squalling babe.

For a room where all the hearts had been focussing on Dag, in one great push the attention was now on something else entirely. All of Dag’s importance seemed to leach from her, to become the babe’s. Capable had seen it time and again, when the baby split from the mother and for those first few breaths, no one cared for the mother.

No one but Max it seemed. Like he could wait for the babe’s life to be confirmed by others, like he didn’t need to see it for himself.

“A boy,” Corpse said, wrapping the babe and settling him on top of Dag’s chest. The old woman sat back on her bum and rubbed at her aching thighs, nodding as she watched Dag’s face turn to the boy’s head. “Ten fingers, ten toes, one cock, one head,” Corpse added. “Healthy pair of lungs.”

“Ohh.” Dag reached up with a hand that shook as badly as Capable’s to brush the tiny rounded cheek of the panting babe.

“You can’t call him Joe,” Capable whispered, leaning in so close she could smell the baby and the blood and the earth that clung to Dag wherever she went. When her sister looked at her, she grasped her hand again. “The boys have never seen anything like this.”

“You know,” Max said, loud enough to be overheard. “When I was a cop, babies were often named after those who delivered ‘em.” He smoothed an errant strand of hair from Dag’s face.

Corpse chuckled. “Never did like my name much, wouldn’t wish it on a babe,” she said.

“I know his name,” Dag whispered, almost into the boy’s own ear. “His name is Nux, who saved us all on the Fury Road.”

“Ahh, now,” Corpse said, in a voice that was almost like she approved. Cheedo wiped tears from her cheeks and Max made a low hum of agreement, rocking Dag and little Nux backwards and forward with his body.

Capable couldn’t breathe, and didn’t know how everyone else in the room was smiling and laughing and saying soft things to one another. Didn’t they realise what gift Dag had given them? Didn’t they see the perfect, perfect baby against her breast?

“Nux it is,” Max said, catching Capable’s eye with a duck of his chin. When she returned his gaze, the corner of his lips twisted upwards in what should have been a smile, but only looked like pain.

“Let me have him, Dag,” she whispered, reaching out her arms, “Just while you do the next bit.” And she folded little Nux into her arms, gazing down at his little red and squished face, and she sat on the floor of the greenhouse while the others turned their attentions back to Dag, rocking backwards and forwards.

“Afterbirth’s good for crops,” Corpse said, and there was a noticeable gasp from their audience of boys when Dag passed it. “Let me see here . . . all looks intact. How do you feel Dag?”

“Mmm,” was all Dag said. She held out her hands and carefully, gently, Capable laid little Nux back on her sister’s breast. She kept her hand on his back, while Dag arranged her arms around the little thing. “So small,” she murmured.

“Small is good,” Corpse said. “Small fits. Do you want to move?”

“No,” Dag said. “Like the dirt.”

At this, Corpse only rolled her eyes. “Well then,” she said, “Perhaps some of these boys might find more blankets for us,” she said, pointedly looking to some of the bravest of Dag’s self-elected guards, those who had crept closer.

When Capable finally stood, her legs nearly gave way underneath her. She held out her hand to help Max to his feet, and it was a little comfort to see him stumble too, locking his braced leg straight and rubbing at his thigh until the feeling returned. She stood with him until he was ready to move, and gestured for him to follow. “Water,” she murmured, and he nodded, tracking her footsteps out of the greenhouse.

“How,” he asked as they took the steps leading down into the dark, cool corridors.

“What?” she asked, turning her head to see him behind her.

He seemed stung by her question, and paused, with his hand going to the cool sandstone to steady himself. He pressed his lips together and studied her before simply saying, “Furiosa?”

“Furi . . .” her question died on her lips. Max stood on the step behind her, giving him added hands on his height he didn’t need. The slope of his shoulders and that strange not-smile had returned, and like a blow to the chest she understood, “Max I didn’t . . . there wasn’t time, Cheedo came so quick . . .” She lunged backward, grabbing both his hands with hers even when he flinched away, and she held them tight. “She’s alive, Max, she and Toast are off to the Yard to get us a Rig, she’s alive, she’s not dead, she’s . . .”

She could see her meaning dawn on him by the way his brows knitted together in confusion, and how the resistance left his hands. He licked his lips as if to speak, then shook his head, staring at nothing in particular as this ticked over in his mind.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, holding his hands tighter. “I should have said, I should have . . . known. I know how that feels.”

At this, Max looked at her, and the strength returned to his grip. Before she had words for how happy she was to see him, to give him that gift of knowledge, or how it felt so good to know she hadn’t killed him with that shot, he had pulled her close to his chest and wrapped his arms around her.

Capable stayed there for some time.

 

***

 

“It depends on what you’re bidding, of course, but to my thinking this is the best Rig in my yard.” The Yard Master paused beside the powerhouse and slapped his palm against her engine plates. “Six wheel drive, twin V8s I installed myself, she can haul forty eight tonnes at speed.”

Toast wanted to whistle, or to climb into that cab and start to play, but Furiosa remained stone-faced and unimpressed, so she kept the lid on her bubbling pot and squinted off into the distance, affecting a boredom that she could never truly feel.

“But for what you’re trading . . .” the Yard Master jumped down from the cab’s step and brushed past Toast, leading them past a row of neatly presented cars, past a field of engines where their War Boys were working with the Gastown and Bullet Farm labourers, and a mountain of tyres, to a pile of scrap that might have passed itself off as a truck before the first bombs fell. The Yard Master grinned at Toast. “This is more in your range.”

“You couldn’t pay me to take that,” Furiosa said.

The Yard Master laughed, a big belly laugh that almost made Toast want to smile along. Almost. She couldn’t imagine being strong enough to run from this man, or to return to him, even with allies at her side. In some ways, with the Yard Master’s broad smile and easily gifted humour, he was almost more frightening than Joe. He pointed a blackened finger and Furiosa and waggled it. “Well you need to think more carefully about what you trade. And I might have something to help with that.” He leaned back against the old, wrecked Rig, hooking his thumbs into his belt loops.

“We’re trading labour and water, that’s all,” Furiosa snapped. Toast stepped closer to her friend, keeping the sun behind her. The Yard Master didn’t seem to care how it glared in his eyes. She doubted that was stupidity on his part, but if it were confidence it somehow unsettled her even more. This man felt free to wander his domain with two killers, with no guard or even gun on his hip.

Like he thought they were no threat at all.

“It’s labour I mean, Imperator Furiosa,” he said, his tongue carefully forming her title in the shape of an insult. “I appreciate your boys working on my engines, but there’s something else I need. There’s a raider party that’s set up a few klicks west of here, in what used to be an old farm. They’ve been harassing my customers when they come in. Since you two ladies are so . . .” his gaze tripped up and down Toast’s small height. “Frightening. If you deal with them, I’ll throw in tyres and a V8 for free.” He patted the wreck as he stood. “But I have my other customers to see.”

“Are you going to sell them the double V8?” Furiosa asked, not turning her head as the Yard Master walked away.

“No, but their offer’s better than yours,” he called back, and Furiosa tilted her head back, closing her eyes so the sun reflected off her blackened head.

Toast approached the scrap and climbed into the cab, disturbing a small family of mice who scampered beneath the rusted iron skeleton of a backseat. “I don’t know if this could pull a fuel pod, never mind a tanker.”

Furiosa dragged her right hand over her close cropped hair and swore under her breath, glancing over her shoulder at the retreating figure of the Yard Master. “We used trade on interest. I guess that option’s off the table.”

Toast climbed onto the Rig’s roof and shaded her eyes as she peered over the Yard’s wares. She could see the Yard Master greet the Gastown party, beginning with all the patter he’d used on them at first. “I don’t know,” she said, “we got the first tour, and I don’t think he’s giving the others anything else. He doesn’t like risk, and all three of us are a risk now.” She smiled when Furiosa looked up at her and she shrugged. “That’s better than nothing.”

Furiosa climbed up to join her, her metal arm scraping on the heated metal of the Rig’s cab roof. When she got to the highpoint, she looked west, where the flat road drifted through the red to the swimming heat of the horizon.

“There are other Rigs in this yard,” Toast added. “We might be able to negotiate something better.”

“Maybe,” Furiosa said, staring at the horizon.

“Or we could find out a little bit more about what he wants,” Toast added. “Talk to Ellie.”

“Do you think she’d know anything?”

“I think wives know more than they should.” When Furiosa looked at her, Toast shrugged. “She lives in that office, that must be something.”

“Do you think you and I could take the bikes and get there before noon?” Furiosa asked.

“That would be a hot ride,” Toast said, turning to look west. “But yes, I think we could.”

“Then let’s go,” Furiosa said, jumping to the hood of the Rig. “Murder for engines, the life of an Imperator.”

“Fun,” Toast said, following along behind her.

 

***

 

Max announced himself with a cough and Cheedo poked her head out from her bedroom, still braiding her hair. “Sorry,” she said, gesturing to the food that Tricky had sent up. “Help yourself, I’ll be there in a moment.” She finished the end of her braid and secured it, while watching Max through the doorway as he studied the vault’s walls and its paint daubed messages.

“This was where you lived?” he asked, pointing to the paint on the floor beside the pool.

Cheedo nodded and adjusted her top, entering the Vault’s main chamber. She looked again at the things they’d written for Joe, things she hadn’t thought about since she had reclaimed these walls.

“And you came back.” Max was still looking at the paint. _Our babies will not be warlords_. “Couldn’t find another room?”

“Wouldn’t let this one own me,” she said, stepping over the paint and reaching for a plate of steamed dumplings. “Eat something. Tricky will weep if she thinks you haven’t tried these.”

“What are they?” Max stared at them before plucking the warm, doughy ball up between his fingers.

“I don’t ask, but everyone likes them,” Cheedo said, and she ate one herself, the hot, spicy mix spilling onto her tongue as she bit through the soft dough. She wiped the back of her hand over her lips, stuffing the rest in her mouth in one go. Max was already on his second, collecting a bone in his palm from his mouth. “Good, eh?” Cheedo asked. “Turns out one of Joe’s old wives used to work on a farm, before Joe stole her, and Tricky who runs the canteen is frighteningly good at making food last.”

“Mmm,” Max agreed.

“Have another, you haven’t eaten since you got here.” Cheedo placed the plates down and sat on the steps, waiting for a moment before Max joined her, finishing the dumplings in a few more bites. He moved on to the pickled vegetables, eating them whole. Cheedo didn’t stop him, just watched how he ate, and thought about the few meals they’d shared on the road. “Dag and Capable don’t sleep here,” she said. “Capable and Toast took rooms that belonged to Joe’s men, and Dag I think just stays in her greenhouse. Sometimes she sleeps with the Wretched down below, and I think Scrap near has a heart attack each time.”

Max huffed softly, wiping a flatbread over the oil and chewing.

“But I need to find some way to feed the rest of them,” she said, as Max finished his meal. He looked at her, his jaw tight. “They may all have enough water, but they’re still starving,” she said.

“So you feed _me_?” he asked, sitting straighter. The oil still glistened on his fingertips.

Cheedo reached for the last flatbread and bit the tip off. “Yes. You will always be fed here, Max. Why did you come back?”

Max rubbed his hand on the thigh of his trousers, glancing at the domed glass ceiling before looking back at her. “Had something to trade,” he said, and shrugged one shoulder.

Cheedo ripped the remains of her flatbread in half, and held one half out to him. “There are other places to trade,” she said, and when he accepted the flatbread, she finished the other half. “So why?” She could see the muscles in his jaw working, but in every other way he was still. After a moment she shook her head. “You don’t have to tell me the why, but can you reassure me on the why not?” When he frowned, she lifted her hand to take in the room they sat in. “Are you here for this? To be the new Joe? Did you think we’d roll over?”

The expression on his face reflected a shock so genuine she couldn’t help but be reassured. See, Corpus? She wanted to say to the little man hiding in the bedroom. Max doesn’t want to rule from on high.

“That’s all I needed to know,” she said, while he still gaped at her. “Since you’re here, and since you’re eating my food,” she smiled, but noticed he didn’t, “there is something you could do for us. There was a murder, and we have the man in a cage, but . . . can you help us train the boys to patrol the Citadel? You used to be a cop, yes?”

“Hmm.”

“Can you teach them?”

Max got to his feet, and grunted something that Cheedo thought was probably a yes. He was halfway to the door when stopped. “When do you expect Furiosa back?”

“In nine days.” In truth it was supposed to be six, but . . .

“Hmm,” he said again, and left the vault.

Cheedo took a deep breath and held it till Max was long out of earshot. I’m sorry, I didn’t think you would, I just had to know, had to ask . . .

She piled the three empty plates on top of each other and left them at the door. She had work to do, and not nearly enough time to chase after hurt feelings.

 

***

 

“Right on time,” Toast murmured, and Furiosa allowed herself a small smile. Her chin was pressed into the dirt, her cheek nuzzled against a scope, and the heat of the earth kept her from shivering in the cold night. She kept her scope trained on the east road and, sure enough, saw the raider’s bike party approach from the desert.

“And there’s the others,” she agreed.

“I think it’ll work,” Toast said. “This is their routine. This is where they're weak.”

Furiosa counted. There were two bikers, two lancers on the car, and the driver – an unusually short man who walked with a heavy limp. They toured the countryside, and according to the Bullet Farmers had even tried to take them out on their way in. They hit parties hard and fast, and she could see why the Yard Master wanted them out. He could do it himself, with his own people, but he always did like safe propositions.

As the abandoned farmhouse began to glow gold with the lanterns lighting its inside, Furiosa shuffled backwards. Slowly, she and Toast crept back to their retreat, keeping low so their shadows wouldn’t be seen on the horizon. The problem with flat land, Furiosa thought, was that is gave you such a bad back.

When they reached their shelter, a burnt out car on the side of the road, they crawled to its far side and unearthed their supplies of water and jerky, and sat together under the stars.

“It might be safer to get the boys,” Toast offered. “Not that I don’t think we can . . .”

“In and out, quick, tomorrow night. Leave the boys working with the Yard Master and we’ll earn as much credit as we can.” She sighed softly, staring into the stars. “Then we can go home.”

“Capable will be worrying.” Toast drank slowly, placing the canteen between them. “Dag will have had her baby.”

“Hmm.” She glanced over at the younger woman. “Do you wish you’d stayed?”

Toast pouted, frowning out at the dark desert wastes. “No. I feel like I should but . . . no.”

Furiosa nodded and reached for the canteen, wetting her own lips.

“Angharad used to say . . . no unnecessary kills,” Toast said softly. “Sometimes I think if she’d lived, she’d have been able to do it all better. Somehow she’d find the food, be able to make peace with Gastown, be able to . . . wish a Rig into existence. If we want a Rig, I need to kill tomorrow.”

“Hmm.” Furiosa could see how tomorrow would play out, how they would set themselves up, when they would take their shots and where they would lay their tripwires. She would go to the house, while Toast remained out in the blind with the rifle. The biker would take the wire out first, flipping, and the car swerve to avoid it, into their patch of carefully planted artillery. She would move then, emerging from their safe haven to plant antiseeds between their eyes, and Toast would take out the lancers before they had a chance to wreak vengeance on Furiosa. If Toast missed, she’d be vulnerable. Furiosa reached for the water again. “Do you want to know my words?”

“Yes.”

“Shoot to kill, not maim.” No gut shots, no long, slow bleeds on the sand, no pain, no suffering, no vengeance. “Don’t shoot someone in the back.” Those who run get to fight another day. “Live longer than your enemies.”

Toast snorted softly. “I like those words,” she said. “Did you just make them up there?”

“I was never a thinker like Angharad.” She closed her eyes. “Take first watch?” And she tried not to hear the surprise and gratitude in Toast’s voice when she said yes.

 

***

 

There is a baby.

Max had forgotten how they smelled, the little noises they made when settling in his arms, the way they only really settled when they were in their mothers’ arms. Creatures of instinct and milk.

There is a baby.

His students, the pups, some of them liked the name ‘cops’ and were using it as they patrolled the grounds of the Citadel. Cops protect the people, Max had told them, and they held to his words, helping the Wretched cross the sandy fields and even, much to their delight, ‘rescuing’ a lizard that had crawled up to sunbathe on a high rock. It may not have been a cat from a tree, but that didn’t seem to dissuade the pups.

At nights, he slept in his car, out on the Citadel’s plains. At any moment he might drive away, put the Citadel’s towers to his back and simply go.

He had no good answer for Cheedo’s question, that she sometimes repeated with the dead at nights. Only that the hours he spent holding Dag’s hand, and thinking Furiosa dead, had been uniquely black and deep. Even Sprog had seemed to hide from him, no ghosts wanted to stay near him.

How, he’d wondered. She had lived through the night, how had she died after? It had to have been infection but she’d been so strong.

The lobe of his ear itched where her rifle had burned a kiss. The crook of his elbow burned where a needle had tied them together. The bridge of his nose, never quite the same since her fist had connected to his muzzle, seemed to hold the smell of her.

He had no good answer for Cheedo’s question, but plenty of bad ones.

There is a baby.

On the sixth night he didn’t walk to the car. He stayed in the greenhouse and walked up and down with little Nux while Dag snored on her cot bed, her head in Capable’s lap. Capable spoke quietly about Nux and the War Boys and how fiercely she missed her sister.

On the seventh night, he rocked little Nux while Cheedo spoke about food, the food they didn’t have, the food they needed, and the trades they couldn’t make without a rig.

On the eighth night, he and little Nux paced the floor of the greenhouse while he spoke in a sing-song voice of the territory around them, the settlements he knew of, the characters he’d spoke to, and Cheedo, Capable and Dag listened along with Nux. When little Nux finally slept, Cheedo placed her hand on his arm. “Did you come back for us?” she whispered.

He didn’t have the heart to say otherwise, and her smile was enough to make him start pacing again, though little Nux was already sleeping.

He came to rest in the greenhouse’s balcony, overlooking the darkness of the desert, the Citadel’s towers and those below. He made sure to keep Nux wrapped tightly, and to sit with his back to the wind so he could shelter him from the worst of the breeze. “You are very loved,” he whispered, looking down at the boy. “And these women will protect you. They will feed you and clothe you and protect you. You are very lucky.”

Little Nux let out a tiny snore.

Max nodded and looked out over the sand. “Yes they will,” he said. His ear lobe itched. His elbow ached. He could smell her on the wind.

“Hey,” Dag stood in the doorway, folding her arms against the chill.

Max brought her her baby, laying Nux in her arms and stroking the tiny cheek. He smiled as Nux seemed to still in his mother’s arms, sleeping more deeply than before. “There,” he said.

“Cheedo says you came back to protect us,” Dag whispered, her rapturous gaze focussed on her child. “But I think you came back to be protected.” She looked up at him, her pale skin reflecting the silver of the moon.

Max placed his hand on the back of her head and leaned in to kiss her brow. “Go back inside where it’s warm,” he said, and Dag shook her head.

“I’m awake now. I’ll watch with you.”

He hesitated a moment, but as Dag walked to the low wall, he followed her, and draped his jacket over her shoulders. They watched the road until the sunrise woke Nux.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> True story, I wrote much of the last chapter quite drunk and after I posted it, started to write this one. I opened it to a long passage fetishising Toast's shoulders and long, poetic passages about the sun kissing them. Not sure where drunk!Palim was going with that, but . . . yeah.


	10. The One Hundred and Sixty First Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is what men forget, that theirs are not the only wants and wonts, 
> 
> Like any woman they ever met.
> 
> This is what men forget.

Toast revved the bike’s engine as they approached the Yard’s gate, and she revved again when their War Boys cheered and hollered in greeting.

Furiosa smiled, and eased off on the acceleration of the car to let Toast pull ahead through the opening gates. It was her car that was loaded with the other bikes, more credit for the Yard Master, and it was her plan, her bullets, but she had no need for glory.

Toast was all but dancing astride her bike, doing lazy loops around Furiosa’s car as they drove up the avenue toward the Yard Master’s office. She stopped so sharply she kicked dust onto the waiting Master’s boots, and she sat back, her spine ram rod straight on her back. “We come bearing gifts,” she said, and shook an overlong forelock of hair from her eyes.

From inside the car, Furiosa could see the Yard Master’s eyes settle on her. The Gastown boys and Bullet Farmers might have been fooled, even her own Way Boys were running up to Toast to salute her, but the Yard Master looked at her, and the corners of his lips twisted upwards.

“Well that’ll be a set of wheels I’m sure,” he said, and he even bowed from the waist. Toast’s grin as she dismounted her hard won bike was as bright as the sun.

Furiosa stayed in the car a little longer, let the boys lead Toast to the little iron walled office, some of the War Boys were taking up the old chants: “Come on crazy War Boys! We are crazy War Boys!”, pumping their fists in the air as they escorted Toast into the shadow of the office.

The Yard Master remained where he was, a few of his own boys lingering. Furiosa pushed her palms, flesh and steel, against the wheel of their stolen car. She reached for the door handle slowly and eased her way out of the car, squaring her boots on the sand. The Yard Master let his head tilt to one side as he scrutinised her. “You know, I might be able to tweak that arm if you want.”

“It does all I need,” she said. Her metal fingers twitched, slow and heavy.

He walked to the car and kicked its bumper, nodding his head. “I appreciate the help. Strange to think a piece of scrap like this could cause me such problems, eh?” He looked at her quickly, turning his whole body to face her. She made sure her shoulders were parallel to his, and that she stayed well out his arm’s reach. “You’ve done well, girl.”

She nodded, just a small bob of the head.

Something crashed in the office and the War Boys began their chanting anew. “Come on crazy War Boys!”

The Yard Master’s smile lingered, like the scent of a man on a pillow. Furiosa’s stomach turned. He took a step closer, studying the dust between them. “I could find more work for you. Might buy you an engine. A day’s ride north and you’ll come across the party that sent these fools.”

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

“Your Citadel is doomed,” he said, looking her in the eye once more.

Stay where you are. Do not give him the ground. She studied him. She could rip his throat out with her teeth, duck beneath his heavy arms, take out his legs with a kick. Stay beneath his centre of gravity, keep him unbalanced, shove the knife from her boot between his lower ribs. Her side ached at the thought.

“Your rebels went to Gastown, did you know that? The ones that survived your little trick in the canyon.”

“Did the Gastown boys tell you that?” she asked, and she allowed herself the sneer that came when his eyes narrowed.

“Your Citadel won’t survive. You don’t have the strength.” He took another step, he was within reach of her now. “You don’t have the brutality, Furiosa, you never did. You should have killed me back then.”

Killed him when she was a girl, beaten and starved, afraid of her own shadow.  She had to force her words from her tight throat. “Care to give me another chance?” Something in the whisper almost sounded like a seduction, like Joe’s purr in her ear. And the Yard Master’s gaze fell to her lips when she spoke.

Carefully, she backed out of his circle of reach and followed the footprints in the clay dust to the office. Beyond the door there was a raucous cacophony of bragging and delight, Toast in its centre, standing on one of the low benches that barely brought her to eye level with some of the boys. The War Boys were teasing and goading their competitors in time honoured tradition. Some of the Bullet Farm boys were trying to claim Toast’s glory, shouting that they had known her as a child, claiming Bullet Farm blood flowed in her veins.

Furiosa weaved through the crowds, reaching Toast as the young Imperator snatched a tin cup from one of her attendants. Furiosa stood on the bench and raised her arms, hollering her own victory yell that was quickly taken up by their crowds. She latched her soft arm around Toast’s shoulders and pulled her close. “He’ll never give us a Rig.”

“Mmm,” Toast said, tipping her head back far, but keeping her lips closed as she raised the cup of liquor to her mouth. When she lowered it, she pressed her face against Furiosa’s neck. “What do we do?”

Furiosa watched the boys from the corner of her eye. While a few looked at the pair of Imperators, most were still showing off to one another, puffing out their chests, arguing over whose team could strip an engine first. “Keep them busy for a bit,” she said, and she slipped away. Toast raised her cup in the air with such force half the liquor sloshed out the side, and she yelled with a feral’s voice.

Furiosa approached the stairs as quiet and sleek as she knew how. When all eyes were on Toast, she moved up the creaking flight quick and sure footed, opening the door and slipping inside. The office was larger than it appeared, with two chambers to the back and even a small tin bath that had seen the sight of water lately.

Ellie opened the door to the right hand chamber and closed it behind her, standing in front of the faded paint with her jaw set in a tight line.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” Furiosa whispered.

There was a slight twitch on the side of Ellie’s mouth, a wince or a grimace that the woman had quickly suppressed. She folded her arms over her ragged top and waited, silent.

“Your husband’s trying to play me, isn’t he?” Furiosa asked, stepped forward to try and avoid being silhouetted in the window. “I won’t tell him you told me.”

This time, it was Ellie’s eyes that tried to betray her. She almost looked back at the room.

“I just need you to tell me if he’s planning to give a Rig to one of the other parties,” she said, raising her right hand, palm upwards. “That’s all.”

There came a noise from the room behind Ellie and the girl winced, her arms spreading as if to block Furiosa’s way. “He doesn’t want to give any of you a rig,” Ellie whispered, quick and urgent. “He thinks you’ll pull each other apart if he leaves you. He thinks . . .” this time, she looked at the entrance, her fists balling on the ends of her outstretched arms.

“He thinks we’ll be his wives?” Furiosa asked softly. When Ellie looked at her, she knew she’d guessed correctly. She forced herself to relax, to be as small as possible. “We don’t want to be his wives, Ellie.”

“Then run,” Ellie whispered. “Run back to your Citadel.”

“I can’t. Because he’s right. We need a Rig. We can’t survive without it.”

The noise came again, sounding like something scurrying over the old wooden floorboards. Ellie closed her eyes. “He sets kill switches on his Rigs,” she said, her voice shaking just a little. “The codes are kept in the lockbox, out there. Five, nine, twenty five. That’s the combination.”

“Thank you,” Furiosa murmured. “I’m going to leave now,” she said, “I’ll be back . . .”

Ellie lunged forward, her hands latching around Furiosa’s metal arm. “Is your Citadel safe?” she hissed, searching Furiosa’s face for some answer.

Were they safe? In the space between one heart beat and the next she could see Max standing atop the Citadel’s towers of blood, see the flesh melt from her hand to reveal steel bones, and see the leering, bloody final grin of Joe as he bore down on her. “It’s ours,” she said. “I can’t say more than that.”

The Yard Master’s wife winced, releasing Furiosa’s arm and sinking to her knees. She began to cry, in silent sobs that wracked her shoulders. The door behind her cracked open, and when Furiosa tensed, Ellie held up a shaking arm to keep Furiosa at bay.

From the inside crept a small child, tiny really, with a mop of sandy hair the same colour as Ellie’s. The child reached Ellie’s hunched back and placed a twisted little hand between Ellie’s shoulders, and looked up at Furiosa with deep, dark eyes. Slowly, Ellie’s hand reached to pull the child toward her, cradling it in her arms, and enveloping it in her safety.

“Don’t tell him you saw her,” Ellie said, her voice surprisingly steady. She sniffed, and raised her tear stained face, her upper lip curled back to reveal her teeth. “I will turn you over if you tell him.”

Furiosa crouched, peering at the little thing protected by Ellie’s body. “Doesn’t he know?”

Ellie huffed with mirthless laughter. “She’s his _daughter_ ,” she said, and her hands went to cradle the babe’s head. “But not perfect. He’d kill anyone who knew. The shame of it.” The mother pressed a kiss into her child’s head, and her little girl smiled, wrapping her arms around her mother’s neck and kissing her cheek with a ‘mwah’ noise added for effect. Furiosa felt herself smile, a reaction she couldn’t suppress, and the little girl smiled at her too, ducking behind her mother’s hair when the stranger looked at her too long.

“I can’t promise,” Furiosa began, though there was a part of her that was already protesting. “I can’t promise we’d get you there. I can’t promise you’ll always be safe there . . .”

Ellie was watching her, breathing shallow. “Go,” she whispered. “I’ll get the Rig’s codes. Just come for us. Please.”

Furiosa nodded, backing away. “I want the big Rig’s codes. The double V8 he keeps in the middle of the yard.” When Ellie nodded, she gave the child a little smile before she opened the office door and slunk down the stairs, while Toast was shimmying her hips to something the War Boys were singing. Even the Yard Master wasn’t watching his own territory. She waited a few moments then barged forward, swearing and snapping at Toast, leading the woman out by her arm. Toast stumbled along behind her, crying out and complaining as they made their way to their own camp within the Yard.

“Well?” Toast asked as they clambered into the car.

Furiosa shook her head and rubbed at the ache of her shoulder. “How’d you feel about stealing a wife?”

Toast whistled low in her throat and reached for one of their water canteens. “Well it went so well last time around,” she murmured.

“Glad you think so.” Furiosa steeled herself against the chair back. “Because we’re also going to steal his daughter.”

Toast looked at her. “And a Rig?”

“And a Rig,” she agreed.

 

***

 

The sun beat down on her shoulders, like strong fingers teasing at the ache in her back that she woke up with every morning she slept in the car.

She eased her head from side to side, let the heat kiss her neck, the tightness there.

Toast knew she should step into the shade offered by the towers of car hulls that made up the outskirts of the Citadel’s camp, but she liked the kiss of the sun a little too much. It pushed the heat into her bones, and it felt like the hands of her sisters, after Joe had had his way.

Toast closed her eyes.

“Everything okay, Imperator?” asked one of her boys as he passed.

She nodded. If she asked, the boy would put his hands on her shoulders and rub, his fingers would work at the knots and aches, and he might even thank her afterwards.

She tested the idea in her mind, saw his face light up with joy and awe, felt the hesitation before his fingers could brush her skin. She might shiver when he finally worked up the courage to do it. Just for a moment, the anticipation of the freedom creeping over her. Maybe the other boys would watch, ask themselves why he had been chosen and not them.

She opened her eyes. The boy had already walked on by. Since they’d heard the plan, two days ago, they had stayed close. The boy had gone to talk to Rev on the fringe of the camp, who was entertaining one of the Bullet Farmers they’d grown closer to. When they saw her looking, they bowed their heads, and she did the same in return.

While the sun eased the ache from her shoulders, she let her mind wander. If not one of the boys who bowed their heads, there was always Max. She knew what his hands felt like, at least her mind did, thought it did, imagined it did. She felt the warm, heavy roughness of his palms over her shoulders, his thumbs working the tight whorls at the base of her neck.

“You need some grease,” Furiosa said from the shelter of their car. She was usually slower to wake than Toast, taking her time to unknot in the car.

Toast guessed that might be something to do with the thousands of days between them, and the thousands of days between Furiosa and a real bed.

Furiosa frowned at her and half opened her mouth in a silent question – are you okay?

Toast shook her head and approached the cab. Furiosa unfolded from the driver’s seat and clambered out. She caught Toast by the elbow and then she gently scraped her blackened fingers over Toast’s forehead. When Toast shivered, Furiosa withdrew her hand. “Toast.”

Toast’s eyes flickered open and she shook her head. “I’m fine,” she said.

The older woman frowned, leaning in a hairsbreadth closer, “if you need more time . . .”

“It’s not that,” Toast assured her, catching her wrist. “Please?” She lifted the hand higher and although Furiosa hesitated, within a moment she had her fingers on Toast’s skin again.

And despite herself, despite that sun on her back, Toast shivered.

She missed her sisters.

She missed their hands.

When Furiosa finished and lowered her hand, she held Toast’s hand for a moment. “There. You are the Imperator,” she said.

Toast flicked her head back, tossing the sweep of hair back from her eyes. The grease would help hold it still. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Furiosa agreed.

Toast took a breath, and then, “Well to hell with you too! You couldn’t take me if you tried!” she winked, and marched away. The Bullet Farmer was watching and Rev speaking to him quietly.

“Get to work!” Furiosa was snarling at the other boys, and Toast marched closer to the office, swearing under her breath.

After a moment, the Bullet Farmer caught up with her. “Everything okay?” he asked.

She spat. “You boys need an Imperator?” she asked, forcing enough bitterness into her voice to be believable. “Fuck her. Let’s find out if the Yard Master has any of that brew about.”

“Uh . . . “the Bullet Farmer hesitated and she spat at him.

“Fine! Stay here. Coward.”

By the time she reached the office, she had herself a small pack of Bullet Farmers and Gastown boys, and the Yard Master was welcoming and consoling. She sat beside him one of his low benches, in the shadow from the great office, and the boys began to talk.

 

 

***

 

“Remember,” Furiosa said, her head bowed over one of the Yard Master’s engines, “the Outriders defend where we go, the rear guard defends we were. No one gets close.”

Her boys nodded, each one bent over their own engines, not a one of them really working. Every now and then, one would wander off, ostensibly to see the party happening outside the office, or to get water from their camp, and each time they returned they carried the faint tang of guzzoline on their hands. For the past two nights they’d drained all the guzzoline from their cars, except the Valiant, and now Furiosa knew the Rig’s tank was sloshing with smuggled fuel.

When the twilight began to creep in she would insist her boys leave Toast and the revelry behind, and when they retreated to their camp in front of the few curious gazes, one or two would slip away with their knives, intending to puncture rubber, and Furiosa would lead a small party towards the rig, while other knives would slit the throats of the few guards not listening to Toast’s stories of killing the War Lord.

No unnecessary kills.

Furiosa tapped her fingers on a piston, running her tongue over her upper lip. “You defend the Rig,” she said. “Not me. Not Toast. It’s always the Rig, do you understand?”

The boys were nodding again. She could see the glitter in the eyes, the jerk in their movements, the way they spoke in hushed tones that did not carry.

War boys going to war again.

Her fingers stilled on the piston. “Protect the Rig,” she whispered. “And yourselves.”

 

***

 

When the sun slipped so far behind the office that the little courtyard, fringed by rusted car parts, was entirely in shadow, Toast set down her cup and stretched, arching her back and yawning.

“You need a refill,” the Yard Master announced, approaching her. He kicked his boots against the toes of hers, gently, but enough to make her sit forward. “You want more.”

“Mmmm,” she said, leaning against the Bullet Farm boy she sat beside, curling her hand over her cheek. “I could drink that all day,” she slurred, “better than Aqua Cola. Better than anything we’ve got at that damned Citadel.”

The Yard Master smiled and gestured to one of his own guards. He stooped to pick up Toast’s cup, and she held her breath, praying he wouldn’t notice how damp the clay was beneath her bench, but he only had eyes for her face, and she kept her smile lazy, her eyes half lidded.

Like Joe had liked.

“You can stay here as long as you need,” the Yard Master said, and he held her cup in his hands, holding her gaze with his own, until he handed it off to his guard, and crossed to the Gastown leader so desperate to hold his attention.

Toast feigned laziness, aware of the hyper rigidity of the boy she leaned on, how terrified he was of her, but how petrified he was that the Yard Master would think wrong of him.

I’m going to steal your wife, you old bastard, she thought, and when the Gastown leader was animated talking about their guzzoline production, completely monopolising their generous host, Toast slipped away. She climbed the stairs to the office, not bothering to hide, and she knew the Yard Master was watching her as she opened the door. She even turned to look at him, bit her bottom lip and let herself linger before she slipped inside.

You think I would crawl into your bed to warm it. You think I would give up my freedom for the gifts you could give me.

“Ellie,” she hissed, the moment she was isolated. In the dark light of the office, she could barely see, knowing only from Furiosa’s description there were two doors.

Behind the left there was a small window, and beneath that a bike, hastily rolled around with the twilight.

“Ellie!”

“What?” The wife appeared, head bowed and closing the interior door behind her. But she had wrapped one of the Yard Master’s leather waistcoats around her ragged dress.

“Furiosa sent me to fetch you, we’re going now,” Toast hissed, pushing forward to the left hand door. She expected it to be locked, but it swung open easily behind her, revealing a large chamber littered with strange mechanisms, and the window at the far side. “Get your girl,” she added, striding toward the dust stained glass.

“Wait,” Ellie disappeared again for a moment and then returned, following Toast with a bundle wrapped in her arms, and a small, dirt coloured dog following at her heels.

Toast stared at the creature, which watched her with black eyes. “What’s that,” she demanded.

“It’s my dog,” Ellie said. “You want the code to the Rig? We take my dog.”

Toast didn’t have enough faith in the Yard Master’s patience to argue. She ran her fingers along the window and pushed the catch open, the rusted iron groaning as she pushed the glass outward. “Can you climb?” she asked, hauling herself over the sill. Beneath the office she could just make out Mon’s form, hulked over her bike. She twisted and held her hands out for the girl.

Ellie’s eyes were wide, and the dog growling.

“Ellie, it’s now or never,” Toast whispered. “Give me your daughter. Follow.”

Ellie squeezed her bundle of rags tighter.

Toast could picture the Yard Master’s heavy boots on the stair, his hand on the door handle, and any moment now he would step into the outside office, looking for a girl to warm his bed, and find instead an Imperator, undermining her enemy by freeing his slaves.

“Ellie, I know you’re afraid,” she said, “But either you stay or you give me your daughter, and I will lower her to the ground. Either way, you make your choice now.”

With one quick kiss to her daughter’s head, Ellie thrust the bundle into Toast’s arms. Toast hung from the sill and dropped, Mon’s arms steadying her as she landed. The dog landed beside her with a thump of dust and gentle huff, and after a moment, Ellie fell alongside.

“Are we ready?” Toast whispered to Mon, swinging her leg over the bike. She snatched the dog up and deposited it between her thighs, Ellie straddling the bike behind and holding to Toast’s waist with a shaking hand.

 

 

***

 

The Rig rolled with reluctance and the strained grunts of Furiosa and her boys. As the twilight grew around them, she climbed to the Rig’s roof and prepared her rifle, the boys working to tease the nearest tanker to the Rig’s hitch.

She remembered Dag’s prayers, and hoped her friend might be saying some now. As the sun slipped below the horizon, the cold rolled in, and she held her head to the scope.

The clunk of the connecting tanker seemed to echo around and around the Yard and Furiosa could have sworn. She let her knees flex to take the impact, and then heard the noise she was expecting, the smash of rage from the direction of the office. Each of her War Boys looked up, and then at her.

“You know what’s coming,” she said, her voice carried on the night’s still air. “What are we?”

“We are crazy free boys,” they chanted.

“What are we?” she lifted her voice.

“We are crazy free boys!” They started to move, some huddling atop the tanker, others scattering back to their support bikes, protecting Rev as he hobbled as quick as he could back to the Valiant. A shotgun round pierced the air and Furiosa hefted the weight of her rifle.

From around a tower of cars screamed Toast’s bike, the wheels spitting up dirt behind them. There was a shadowy lump clinging to Toast’s back as she accelerated towards them.

The next boy round the corner fell when Furiosa’s rifle crackled in her hands.

The bike screeched to a halt and Ellie was climbing into the cab, holding her daughter in her arms. “Kill switch!” Furiosa yelled, her rifle jumping again, another boy falling.

Toast was holding something too and she threw it into the cab with force.

“What’s that?” Furiosa asked as Toast clambered back on her bike, one of the boy’s straddling along behind.

“A fucking dog!” Toast yelled, gunning forward.

Beneath Furiosa’s feet the Rig growled and she dropped into the cab, slamming into first gear and coaxing the behemoth forward. Ellie was huddled in the passenger footwell, her daughter and . . . yes . . . a small little bundle of fluff . . . curled up in her arms.

Toast was weaving between the stacks, her lancer clearing a path, and Furiosa followed, surprised at just how quickly the Rig pulled away, even with an empty tanker attached. She was a beast of a machine, and Furiosa yanked hard on the wheel, clipping a stack of cars onto a posse of the Gastown boys that were falling over one another to try and see where this sudden commotion had come from.

Ahead of her, Toast was blazing a path, the growl and snap of the bike’s engine just about audible over the Rig’s heavy rumble. And then in a crescendo of roars, the Valiant burst from the sides, followed by the other bikes.

“Keep down,” she said, hauling at the wheel and feeling the slip of the tanker behind them. This War Rig was a different beast, and it still fought her, its wheel juddering beneath her hands.

Ahead of her, Toast’s lancer swept a guard from his post with a well thrown rock. The Valiant, in her side mirror, was causing Bullet Farmers to fall in their wake, and above the engines came the chorus of gunfire.

The tall fence, its welded metal and swinging chains, grew frighteningly quickly towards them, and Toast abruptly pulled back, letting Furiosa slam her foot on the gas pedal. “Brace yourself,” she snarled at Ellie, pushing her metal arm against the dash as the Rig tore through the flimsy corrugated iron, her outriders following along behind. Toast was as quickly powering forward and ahead again, her bike quickly catching the tread of the packed dirt road.

Ellie’s daughter was crying, the dog barking, and Furiosa kicked up a gear as they bounced onto the road, the Rig hauling the tanker along where it did not want to go.

With a growl of V8s, the Valiant pulled ahead of her, taking up a defensive position in front of her nose. She could make out Rev, hunched over the wheel, and the lancers already beginning to climb from the rear of the car, steadying one another as they boarded the Rig, crawling up over its roof and onto the hauling tanker.

She saw one fall in her mirror, and in the dark he seemed to be sucked into the road itself, until the lights of a pursuit vehicle illuminated his form, briefly, and then he was gone under those wheels too.

No unnecessary deaths.

Ellie pulled the whimpering dog further into the footwell, and the roar of the Rig almost shook the scream loose from Furiosa’s throat.

Lights flickered ahead but before her stiff steel hand could reach for the horn, Toast was already tearing ahead, her lancer’s guns firing in bursts of yellow and red.

One hundred and sixty days of salt. On the one hundred and sixty first, surely there was something else, something different from running the same flight over and over. One hundred and sixty one days later, she wouldn’t be watching the same boys die for the same reasons.

The Yard’s sentry bikes broke against Toast’s defence like the crash of Aqua Cola from the Citadel’s pipes, and in the half light of the Rig’s lanterns, she saw Toast’s bike slip down, the cloud of clay that billowed above them.

One hundred and sixty one days of salt.

 

***

 

Clay dust, red and blood filled her mouth and nose, and she couldn’t breathe for the stench of guzzoline.

She saw Angharad slip beneath the wheels.

Her body knew how to move, how to force its way upwards, ignoring the wrenching stab of pain in her leg and the weight of Mon on her arm, and Toast was on her feet in time to duck from the swinging club that whizzed past her, vaguely connected to a dirt bike.

Her Rig was getting further away.

She rolled in the dirt, feeling for the pistol she knew Mon had been carrying. Her fingertips closed around something small and blunt and she lunged for it, her hands seeking out the familiar clasp of the grip. She came up onto one knee, aiming for the road, feeling the guzzoline-sticky dirt cling to her face.

Behind her, were there more bikes? She could just make out the three tearing away in the night, toward the ever hurtling Rig, but . . . yes. It was not just the steady thumping of her heart behind her. It was the rapidly approaching whine of a dirt bike’s engine, closer and closer, the spit of rubber on clay, and . . .

Toast turned, pulling the trigger three times, and it was her second shot that connected, knocking the last rider from his bike and sending the bike tumbling wheel over wheel, into the night. Her third went wide. Her fourth bullet she pumped into the skull of the fallen rider.

Protect the Rig, Furiosa had said to her when they planned. The Rig is yours.

It was all the strength she had to stand on two feet once more, to stumble toward the idling bike, and pull it up between her legs. The chasing parties from the Yard were almost past now, their lights beginning to narrow as their beams chased away from her.

Toast chambered another round and twisted the bike’s throttle, and it jumped forward, like a beast that wanted to return to its mother. Holding herself low over the tank she felt the sand whip her face as she pursued the chasers. Their boys had done well, only two cars from the Yard, the rest Gastown bikes and a buggy. The Bullet Farmers . . . well they had less need of a tanker. They were not about to chase after another Rig. Not so soon.

As for her, she was coming up behind them, back to her Rig, and its inky shadow against the starless sky.

She was aiming at the first rider before he knew she was on his tail, and squeezing the trigger. He fell, and another biker went down from a shot that came from the Rig’s back. The next she missed, but as he veered towards her she braked hard, so he overcorrected and toppled, a thump beneath her wheels that she fought hard to correct.

Gunning the engine so it screamed, she took a wider route away from the road, bumping and shaking over the rougher terrain, but further from the Yard Master’s range. The bike sputtered as she bounced it over the hard packed earth and she clenched her jaw, judging the distance between her and the Rig’s flank.

Protect the Rig.

She veered left, throwing her empty pistol at the nearest biker. Two shots from the Rig despatched the next who came for her and she slipped into the Rig’s wake, ducking her head from the stones and clods that were being kicked up by the tanker’s mighty wheels.

“Toast!” yelled someone above her and she lifted her hand, just as she saw a Gastown boy veer his bike closer.

Her yell was inarticulate, and she launched herself forward, more intimately aware of the speed of the road beneath her than she had ever known any man.

A hand tightened around hers and she fell, her arm taking her weight and she swung like a sack into the side of the tanker, the impact knocking the air from her lungs, but the hand on her wrist was pulling her up, to where the tanker was flat and the wind was whipping past them.

She lay on the tanker’s roof for a moment, the heat of the metal beneath her cheek like a brand. I am this Rig’s beast now, some part of her swore. Whatever it needs, it may have from my flesh.

“Wheels,” she rasped, and the boy crouched at her head nodded.

“We’re aiming for them! You okay?”

She shook that question away and, with great effort, levered her hands beneath her shoulders and pushed herself up. It was pain, pain she’d never known, and she stumbled to her feet as the tanker bounced and weaved over the road.

The boys were aiming their rifles at the Yard Master’s wheels, trying to catch where their knives had weakened. They would never make the shot.

“Hold them off!” she yelled, and moved one foot in front of the other, careful of the Rig’s sleek movements on the dusty road, until she reached the cab.

When she opened the roof Furiosa twisted in the driving seat, shotgun in hand and barrels pointed to the skylight. There was a second where Toast could almost predict how the buckshot would feel, penetrating her body, before Furiosa’s eyes widened and mouth dropped into a perfect ‘oh’.

Toast dropped inside, crying out at the jar of her bones. Her boot made contact with the dog and it yelped, pressing closer to Ellie. “Take the shot, I’ll drive,” she yelled, her words echoing strangely in her own head.

Furiosa was still staring at her, until Toast shoved hard at her metal arm, then she nodded and shifted in her seat, kicking the gas pedal down. She met Toast’s gaze, and on a silent count of three they switched.

Toast slipped into the seat, kicked the dead man’s foot free, and ran her hands along the great wheel. Furiosa climbed from the roof hatch, disappearing into the inky night.

“You’re bleeding,” came a near silent whisper from the footwell.

Toast reached up, smearing the blood and oil into her hair. “It’s not my blood,” she murmured, and reached up to pull on the Rig’s horn. The great beast bellowed, sending shivers down deep into Toast’s core.

She fancied she even heard the report of Furiosa’s rifle, right before the cars collided with one another in her side mirrors.

She reached for the horn again and the Valiant settled into position ahead of her, lighting their long road ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have written much of this and the next chapter listening to 'Brothers in Arms' on repeat . . . .
> 
> Also - shoulders. Toast. Sun. All very good. I reckon there are two or three more chapters left, we may even get finished this week!


	11. Not Taken Alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is what men mean. In their silences and shouts.
> 
> Their embraces, reluctant and keen.
> 
> This is what men mean.

The dawn was chased by the Scrap Master’s cars.

“Do you think he’s angrier about me or the Rig?” Ellie asked, her brown eyes reflected in the rearview mirror. This Rig had no backseat, just an empty flat cab that Ellie hunkered down in, with little Zoe sitting in her lap, and Dog stretched out by her ankles.

Toast watched this exchange in the mirror, she ached too much to turn her shoulders and see. Save that pain for when the cars caught up with them.

Furiosa, loading her rifle in the passenger seat, offered a soft smile to the woman. “That you needed to ask is why you left,” she murmured.

Toast huffed at this, and her gaze was drawn again to the cars behind them. They had moved fast in the night, replacing wheels. Refuelling too probably, and maybe they’d burned through some nitrous to make up the distance between them. It was a five day drive back to the Citadel, and though her own eyes prickled with dust and grease, her body rebelled against sleep.

“Is this what you do?” Ellie asked, running her fingers over Zoe’s hair. “Do you rescue wives?”

“Free them,” Furiosa corrected, while Toast glanced at her aside and mouthed ‘do we?’ Furiosa smirked. “Freed you, didn’t I?”

“And that went so well,” Toast said archly, but without menace.

“You don’t seem afraid,” Ellie murmured. She leaned back against the cab wall and Dog looked at her, one ear pricked.

The flesh and steel hands both relaxed over the rifle, and Furiosa checked the mirror on her left, much as Toast checked the mirror on her right, and both saw the red clouds on the road behind them. Furiosa set the rifle on the dash, her metal claws holding just a little longer. “I’m afraid,” she said, “I’m afraid of engine failure and gun jams. I’m afraid of pain and I’m afraid of dying. I’m afraid of losing people.” Furiosa pulled back and rested her arm on the back of her seat. “And then I’m afraid of the things I can’t even name.”

“Dog!” Zoe announced, and Dog turned to her, his tail thumping against the floor of the cab. Dog shuffled closer, moving his front paws, and licking Zoe’s cheek quickly, making the girl laugh, while Dog whined, ducking his head and burying his nose between his paws.

“Don’t let him take us back,” Ellie said, with one hand on Dog’s back, the other on Zoe’s. When Furiosa and Toast looked over their shoulders, Ellie returned their gazes. Those dark eyes burned into Toast’s skull, glowing coals that embedded themselves in her head. She nodded and turned back to the road. From the corner of her eye, she could see Furiosa reach again for her rifle, stroking the stock much as Ellie stroked Zoe’s back.

The rock and rumble of the Rig as they tore over the long, flat road had lulled Zoe and Dog to sleep. Even Ellie had closed her eyes, her head rolled against the cab’s wall, while Toast and Furiosa watched the road sweep beneath their wheels, and the cars in the mirror creep ever closer. Ahead of them the Valiant bounced over the road, Rev and his lancer just visible through the dirt streaked glass. Toast pinched her eyelids with her fingertips.

“You okay?” Furiosa asked.

“Fine,” she said. She was as fine as Furiosa at the least, and if Furiosa wouldn’t sleep, neither would she.

She pinched her eyelids again, pushing her thumb against the soft agony of her eye. As she blinked, the watery horizon blinked back at her, the flickering mirage broken just a little. “You see that?”

Furiosa was sitting straighter, rifle finding its way into her palms. “Where?”

“On the road, you see it?” Toast would have pointed but there was only one road, and not until the sand overcame the land in the next few days would it change from this long, flat ride. “You see it? It’s a car.” She reached for the horn, and the Valiant dropped back to her side, the lancer leaning out of the passenger window. “Car ahead!” she shouted. “Stay close!”

In the mirror, she could see Ellie clutching her charges closer to her chest, Dog and daughter awake, watching Ellie with wide eyes.

“I see it,” Furiosa hopped onto the seat and rolled the hatch back, poking up and resting the rifle on the roof of the cab. Toast could see it clearly now, hurtling towards them, black and scarred and . . . “I have it,” Furiosa murmured, barely audible over the racing wind, “how . . .”

Furiosa dropped back into her seat, her face slack. For a moment, Toast almost thought her friend had been shot and she reached over to grab Furiosa’s shoulder. Furiosa looked at her, mouth hanging open. “It’s _Max_.”

Toast’s head whipped round so fast her neck hurt and she hunched over the wheel, peering through the glass at the oncoming car. “Are you sure?” she asked, even as Furiosa was leaning over behind her back to shout at Rev. “How does he know . . .”

“I don’t know.” Furiosa was preparing to climb out the hatch again, slinging the rifle onto her back. “But I think we can get those cars off our back.”

“What?” Toast began to feel as though she was stuttering and stammering, and Ellie seemed no clearer on what was happening, almost reaching out for Furiosa as she hauled herself up and half out the hatch.

She could see the car clearer now, a V8 working hard and proud on its nose, and she remembered the same car chasing the Rig the last time around. She reached for the horn again and the Valiant dropped back behind her, giving Max time to loop large on the countryside and spin, making up the distance between them and veering into place on her right hand side. She watched him out the window, he had to duck his head to see her under that low roof, and she could see in his face the confusion she knew was on hers.

“Hey!” she called.

“Hey!” he called back.

Her mind raced and she glanced at the road, and then back at him, and then at Furiosa, half leaning over her. “You’ll never guess what we stole!”

The Interceptor veered right, snatching Max from her sight, before he eased it back alongside the Rig. “I have an idea!” he yelled.

“We got his wife too!” Was it Toast’s imagination, or was that a hint of a smile that he hid by straightening, letting the Interceptor shield him.

Furiosa smacked her open palm against the roof of the cab and then ducked down to speak to Toast outside of the roaring wind. “Whatever happens, you keep going.”

“Furiosa, no,” she began, but Furiosa was already up, rifle and pistol tied to her body. “Damn it!” Toast yelled as Furiosa sidled down by the driver’s window, hanging to the Rig with her stiff metal hand. “Furiosa!”

Her friend turned her head to her, a smile lingering on her lips. “Just drive steady.”

“Damn you!”  But as Furiosa leaned out over the road, Toast couldn’t keep swearing. Instead she studied the road ahead of them, attempting to memorise its every pebble as they hurtled beneath her at eighty klicks an hour. She couldn’t see it, but she imagined that Max was doing much the same, perhaps nudging the Interceptor closer, while Furiosa got lower and lower in the corner of Toast’s eye.

And then there was a moment like the way Toast’s body would tense before she came, and the Interceptor was veering away, a figure clinging to its side, one leg and one arm through the open window, the rest of her body soft and exposed and being whipped past the clay dirt.

“What now?” Ellie whispered.

Toast reached for the horn and blasted it long and hard, while in her rearview mirror the Interceptor rolled to a halt, sprawled over the road, and two figures unfolded to flank the car.

 

***

 

Max reached into the back of the Interceptor, hauling out his supplies while Furiosa climbed atop, lying prone on the hot, black, metal roof and setting up her rifle to aim down the road.

His ear itched.

He ran forward, as far as he knew he could reasonably run back, and laid his trip mines, splaying each spidery host of gunpowder over the road. Furiosa’s rifle barked and something whizzed over the top of his head.

She did that on purpose, he was sure. With his trap set he sprinted back to her, while she set up her next shot and took that too, and as he ran toward her, he looked his fill.

There were great grey circles beneath her clear eyes, and a gauntness to her cheeks that spoke of illness and fever. Her steel hand was bulkier, slower too, he thought, but the rest of her was whole, solid, and strong. As he neared the car she took her third shot and then packed up, slinging into the passenger seat as he reached the door. He gunned the Interceptor into first and second and third in the space of a few yards, tearing away from where the first of the outriders had hit his trap.

Furiosa had wasted three of the bikers already, another had been taken out when his grenades flipped a sand buggy. He counted four more, dressed in Gastown garb, bearing across the rough countryside towards them, while the heavily armoured cruiser and accompanying pair of cars continued on the road. He tugged at the wheel, fighting with the silty clay beneath his wheels, and in one overcorrection both he and Furiosa were jerked from side to side, her left shoulder hitting the pillar, his right hitting the other, and as they came out of the spin Furiosa was leaning out of the window with pistol in hand.

Down goes another biker.

Clutch and gas, brake clutch gas, the V8 sang in her own way, and he was quick enough to clip the back wheel out from a fleeing biker. The other two immediately began tearing back the way they’d came, crouched low over their bikes.

He bounced the Interceptor back on to the road and her rear wheels skidded away behind him, jerking them to the side until the grip of dusted tarmac caught them and they were hauling back to the advancing cruiser. Furiosa twisted her long body between the front seats, leaning into the rear to search through his kit, her hip brushing his shoulder like the kiss of an exhaust on bare skin. She fell back into her seat with the grenades she was looking for and then sat up on the window’s lip, her entire upper body hanging out. He reached over with his hand, looping his fingers through her belt as they bore down on the nearest buggy.

Furiosa’s aim was always true, and the two grenades she threw popped beneath the buggy’s rear axle, hot yellow flames licking up the side and pushing the buggy arse over end. He swerved and Furiosa’s full weight yanked against his shoulder, he could see her lurching sideways, see a grenade spit fire and dust behind them as it tumbled from her hands. He held her belt with a white knuckled hand and as the second buggy veered towards them jerked her back inwards.

The buggy smashed into the Interceptor’s left flank, and the Interceptor reacted by bouncing right. He let her go where she wanted, looking over at Furiosa as she righted herself, her hands going for the rifle stashed awkwardly in the footwell.

The buggy was coming for them again, and the cruiser making a lead ahead of them, so he wrenched the wheel right and they spun, the buggy overshooting them and bouncing into the roughage. The engine coughed and complained, but the old girl didn’t blow. She wheezed in air and span her wheels, leaping forward toward the tarmac and the cruiser, and far, far in the distance, the Rig.

Furiosa was part way to climbing out of the window again, the same woman who had charged a man holding a shotgun on her, the same woman who had climbed a Rig with a pierced lung. “Hey!” he snapped, grabbing at her belt again.

“Get me closer!” she yelled.

He could see the buggy cutting a diagonal towards them, but it was slow, and he had always been fast. The Interceptor opened her lungs and roared, hurtling closer to the cruiser, bristling with boys and guns.

“Stay in,” he said, and cut wide himself, arcing alongside the road, and gunning for the speed they lost leaving the tarmac behind. Shots rung off the metal and Furiosa flinched until they started missing. He was just too far for them to fire their small pistols with any reasonable accuracy, and they were almost too close to hit with the rifle’s range.

The buggy was veering now to try and catch them, its squat little wheels compressing as they took the weight of the bouncing metal. Hard, fast, out of control.

“Rifle now,” he said, and she did so without question, aiming the long scope out the window.

Just as he’d thought, the cruiser yanked a hard right, because rifles were a long range weapon and at speed, range was no sweet mistress. He grabbed at Furiosa as he slammed on the brakes and with his right hand hauled the wheel right.

The Interceptor screamed, but she skipped to the side, as the buggy shot behind them, and straight into the cruiser’s path. They smacked into one another with sickening force, the reinforced frame of the buggy tearing like tissue over the armoured cruiser, and both spinning end over end.

The Interceptor’s skid kept rolling, spinning, and with one hand he fought for the twitching wheel, fought to keep his grip on Furiosa, and then they were rolling, red clay, blue sky, black bonnet, blue sky, ochre dust, blue sky, clay, sky, clay, sky, clay, sky, clay, sky.

The sky spun in lazy circles in front of his eyes, and he was aware of his arms dangling above his head, a thudding ache against his ear, and Furiosa’s groan.

He shook his head, spots of black dancing across his vision and threatening to bring up his breakfast, and he was aware of a thump and movement beside him. He turned just enough to see Furiosa crawl on the ceiling, her fingers digging into the dirt to pull herself from the Interceptor. He reached for her, twisting his hips to escape his seat and falling hard against the Interceptor’s roof, sending another stab of pain down his back and straight into his bad knee. He pushed along on his back, the world still spinning in long, sweeping circles, till his back was on the earth and he faced the sky.

When he rolled to his belly, he could see Furiosa stumbling toward the fire, and it seemed as though she was walking to embrace it, arms spread, except for the metal claw half dangling from her left forearm. It was matched by the shotgun in her right.

He pushed to his feet and followed, his legs barely obeying his brain, only following her like her lurching shadow as another pulse of yellow fire puffed into the sky.

He could see then the survivor, crawling from the cruiser’s smashed window, his back blackened and burned.

Max reached for the pistol on his hip and started to jog, his head clearing with every bone jarring step he took closer.

The survivor rolled to his back, holding his hands in the air, until Furiosa aimed the shotgun and squeezed the trigger, and then the man’s hands fell back against the earth, the dark and blackened blood that seeped from his head near indistinguishable from the oil and guzzoline streaked clay. While Furiosa sagged, her face tilting to the sky, Max planted antiseeds in the skulls of the others he saw escaping, then he fell to his knees beside the burning wreckage, and Furiosa dropped to hers.

They sat, watching the black smoke spiral up to the sky as the blue continued its long, slow circles around their heads.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooooh, Max and Furiosa, alone in the desert, S-U-R-V-I-V-I-N-G.
> 
> Also, see! I didn't kill the dog! I'm not that mean . . .like I mean there's still another two or three chapters but yeah, didn't kill the dog!


	12. Redeemed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is how men feel, even they are lonely, scared, 
> 
> And all their fears come real.
> 
> This is how men feel.

Together, they picked over the carcass of the wreckage, stripping metal bones and salvaging precious bullets, guns and water cannisters from the charred remains, and burning the bodies far from their camp. Furiosa tracked back and forward between the wreck and the upturned Interceptor, lugging long metal components they might use to lever under the Interceptor’s roof, hauling guns, and watching the sun as it crossed the sky.

From the corner of her eye, she could see Max watching her. When she burned her hand on the wreck, he paused his work till she shook it off. As she worked, he circled her.

And the bubbling guzzoline inside her guts roiled more.

“Here,” Max said, as she stopped by the Interceptor with no more treasures. He held a water canteen out to her, and waited as she stared at it. “Drink,” he said after a moment.

She stared at his hand, the puckered white scar where he’d been shot by an arrow sat proud when he gripped the canteen, and she found herself fascinated by it, by the dust and dirt that lay in the creases and folds of his knuckles.

“Furiosa,” he said softly.

“Why’d you leave?”

The scarred hand wavered, then slowly fell to his side. He was frowning at her, brows tightened over his eyes. She was seized with a need to scrub the dirt from his face, to see him properly, to stare into those eyes and demand it. Why did you leave me?

After a moment, Max shrugged.

The wordless yell that exploded from her throat surprised her as much as him, but she got the jump on him, and laid her palms flat on his shoulders, shoving him so hard his arms windmilled in big circles as he stumbled away from her, fighting to keep on his feet.

“I wanted to go across the salt, I wanted to leave. It was _your_ idea to take the Citadel,” she snapped, and her own words hit her in the chest like a hammer. It was so hard to breathe. She exhaled, long and slow, letting her body double over.

Max's wild eyes settled on her for a moment, before skittering off to check the horizon. When they came back to her, he took a step forward, his hands raised in peace. “I came back,” he huffed, soft, like coaxing a dog. “Didn’t I?”

Her head was heavy, but she lifted it, and stared at him. The bloody red sun was sinking behind him, turning him into a dark shadow, looming beside his wrecked car, more shadow than man. More dream than saviour. “You wouldn’t need to come back if you hadn’t left,” she whispered. And she turned away, limping out toward the dust, and the desolate, long-shadowed desert. She had reached almost the length of his shadow when she felt her feet take root. “Damn you!” she spat, whipping around once more. “I thought you were reliable! Damn you!”

Max still had his hands raised, but he crouched, lowering his centre of gravity, though she wasn't sure she could put together a coherent attack any more than a coherent thought. "What the hell?" he snapped, impatient with her fury.

"You left." She jabbed her finger in the air between them. "You left, _because that's. What. Men. Do._ " Spit flecked on her lip and she could see the utter lack of comprehension in his gaze. "You break things and you never stick around to see how they'll be put back together. You left _me_ to fix what _we_ broke."

Slowly, Max began to straighten, losing his warrior’s stance. "If I'd stayed, they would have thought I won." He took a step closer. "It wasn't my win."

"Fuck that and fuck you," she snarled right back. "It was _ours_. And you left. You can't come back now and say you want to be part of it." She lunged forward, noting how he dropped quickly back into his fighting stance. But she just snatched her rifle from the sand and started on her walk to the road.

“Furiosa!"

Though the words burned her lips, she called “I’m getting food,” and kept walking.

 

The night had fully blossomed when she returned with her catch. Max had spent the time digging a hole under one side of the Special, propping metal struts beneath her, ready to free her in the morning. He had set a lantern out on the dust and set a fire, the light guiding her home. Max watched Furiosa's approach from the engine, wiping his hands on the blue scarf he still wore. Gifted from the Vuvalini. She threw her lizards down and circled around the trunk of the Pursuit Special, unwilling to make more peace than that.

"I wanted to bury Valkyrie," he said after a moment, his soft words carrying in the desert's still night.

"Fuck that," she spat, and she heard his sigh. "I could have fucking buried Valkyrie. You think I wanted you to go pay them respect? They died for what we achieved."

"It wasn't the only reason." He tossed his wrench toward the fire. "But I did. Her. The others I found while searching for the car," and he patted the side of the Interceptor with his palm.

"I don't fucking need you to bury my dead." She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. My dead are always with me. The fire was warm on her bare arms, and she let her eyes close. "I needed someone to tell me how Capable was doing,” she said, in a calmer voicer. “If she was crying. I needed someone to stand with Cheedo. I needed someone to be there for Toast's first kill. That's what I needed, Max." 

He said nothing, and he didn't approach either. When she lifted her chin from her knees she could see he was still by his car, seemingly memorising every aspect of the dust scarred metal. After a moment, he shook his head just a little, and stooped to pick up the lizards. He produced a knife from his boot, leaned against the Interceptor, and began skinning. “I couldn’t do that,” he said after peeling a strip of scale away and letting it fall to the dust.  “I can’t . . .”

“Why, because it’s hard?” she snapped. Her bones ached, her eyelids were heavy and filled with grit, and her mind slow and fogged, but it worried on the words like a rat on a bone, _you left me_. She stretched her legs out and reached for her arm, working with the straps. “It’s not easy for me, either. But _they_ need me,” she said, and laid her arm between them. 

After a while, he crouched over the fire and skewered the carcasses, propping them over the flames. He said nothing else, but turned them every now and then, and when their flesh crackled and spat, he wandered closer to her and handed one skewer over. He sat on the hard earth and stretched his bad leg out in front of him, picking at his meal. "Dag had a boy," he said in between mouthfuls. "She called him Nux. He's perfect. Beautiful."

Nux. She tore a strip of meat with her fingers and popped the burning sliver into her mouth. Nux. It brought a smile to her lips.

"She didn't know the trick of winding him," Max continued. "You just rub, gentle, on their backs. She didn't know. Corpse probably could have showed her but . . . I did." 

"Hmm."

“And . . .” He licked his lips, his hand hovering over charred lizard, and he looked at her.

She might forgive him, she thought, forgive him for haunting her fevered dreams and bleeding in her arms every night. She might forgive him that, and other sins too. She might forgive him more than she forgave herself.

It frightened her enough to draw her knees back up to her chest, and bite off a hunk of meat, all to give her something between them, to keep him from looking at her, and seeing her.

“Capable does cry,” he said in a low voice. “She cries and shakes. And she doesn’t know how to hold little Nux. She misses Toast and misses you and Angharad and . . . she cries.” They ate without words, just the crackling of the fire and the sound of their jaws working on unpalatable meat, the gentle whisper of their breath and the trill of the wind as it passed them. Furiosa shivered. “Do you want my jacket?” Max asked.

“No.”

So they sat, their meal finished, and the stars watching their silence.

“Once I got my car,” Max announced as she was trying not to shiver too loudly, “I circled the Citadel for days. I dreamed of you.” He lay back on the dust, propping himself up on his forearms, tilting his head back to watch the stars. She studied him from the corner of her eye, the long line of his body she knew better than her own. Better than almost anyone’s. “I dreamed of you in the Citadel, with my wife, my son. And the other dead. I dreamed that you wouldn’t hear me, and when I tried to reach you . . . the dead stopped me.” He shook his head and relaxed back, clasping his hands beneath his head. He let out a soft hum of appreciation as he stretched out flat. Furiosa clung to her own limbs, shivering into her tiny shelter. “I found some of Joe’s boys, I only needed to tell them I was yours and they ran from me.”

“I will not have you,” she whispered into her knees. “I have no responsibility for you. I have enough to bear on my shoulders.”

“Hmm.”

Another shiver grabbed her, shaking her whole body, and with a sigh she climbed to her feet and walked over. Max didn’t move, only lay on his back and watched her. I was yours, he’d said. She knew what that meant, knew what it threatened.

Max’s lips quirked into a strange half smile, and he nodded. “When I told them I was allied with you, they ran from me,” he said, as though he’d never paused. “And I almost wanted to kill them anyway.”

She lowered herself to the ground beside him, pressing her side against him and curving her arm over his chest. He slid his right arm over her shoulders, and they clung to their own heat.

“I met a group of traders who sometimes come in and trade to your people, they did it all under Joe’s nose. They said your people were different. Strong. I found myself back at that canyon more than once. Eventually the Rock Riders asked me to stay away.”

When he spoke, she could hear the rumble in his chest. When he breathed in, his low, slow heartbeat was occluded, until he breathed out and her ear was lowered toward it once more.

“I dreamed of you,” she whispered. “I dreamed you went for Nux, and you brought him back. And Joe and all his warriors. You filled my home with blood.”

Max’s hand, on the small of her back, spasmed.

“I don’t know how to stay,” he murmured, his lips brushing the top of her head, and she shivered again. “There are some things that can never be fixed.”

“No,” she agreed, though it took some work to force the word from her dry lips. “But not everything that’s broken is useless.” Her hand had crept up to his chest, her fingers poised over the steady rise and fall of his shirt above his heart. “You can’t just give up.”

“When I came back you weren’t there. For a while, I . . . I thought you were dead.” Again, his hand on her back seemed to twitch, and his arm held her tighter to his side. “I can’t promise I know anything about green, or feeding all your lost souls . . .”

“I’m not asking for that. And besides, Cheedo is feeding them.” She lifted her head enough to gaze down at him. “I’m asking you to be there when she needs you. I’m asking you to show Capable there’s a way to move on. I’m asking you to teach Dag how to wind her baby. I’m asking you to train Toast how to fight against the odds. I’m asking you to help these girls survive.” He was barely watching her, focussed so much on her words and lips that she felt she could say anything, safe beneath the stars and in their island of warmth. “I am asking you to stay with _me_.”

Max’s hand slid up to the nape of her neck and he pulled just enough to guide her lips to his, and it was all heat and strength between them. She’d never known a kiss so soft, lips that gave so much underneath her own, or so much horsepower beneath her body. She’d never known strength to be tempered with give, or the restraining hand on her neck feel so much like a plate of armour, protecting her where she was vulnerable.

Max let his head settle back against the dirt, and he opened his mouth wider, letting her inside of him, like she could invade him, and conquer his body. She found her knee was straddling his hips, her hand creeping up to lie against his neck. Beneath her fingertips his blood raced, and beneath her thigh, his blood pumped him hard and tight against her skin through the leather of their pants.

Something in this distance howled.

They broke apart, Furiosa scrambling for the guns, Max on his feet and facing the direction of the burned corpses. He reached his hand out for the shotgun she handed him, and she backed up beside him, holding a pistol in her hand, blinking to recover her night vision, keeping the firelight to her back.

The howl was answered.

“The bodies,” Max rasped, all animal and no man inside him.

She nodded. “They won’t come to the fire,” she said. They stood together, legs bent, weapons ready, breathing in slow and shaky gasps. They waited on guard for longer than they needed, until the fire had dwindled so much she needed to stoke it, pour more guzzoline over its embers. While she worked, Max retreated to the lee of the Interceptor, and sat with his back against its doors, his shotgun resting over his lap. She joined him, let him loop his arm over her shoulders, let herself sidle closer to his warmth, and then she murmured, “Will you take first watch?”

Max made a low hum of assent, and when she leaned her head against his shoulder, he hummed again, this one lower, and less a noise for her, but something of his soul that escaped him then. Furiosa closed her eyes, and listened to him breathe, listened to the sounds of the night around them, the occasional far off howl of a dingo, and the crackle of the fire.

The night was waning when Max woke her with a gentle shake of his arm. She blinked for a moment, and wiped the wetness from her lips as she sat straighter. “Sleep,” she said, but Max’s head had already lolled backwards against the side of the Interceptor, his mouth part open. She watched him sleep in the half light of the lantern, and then in the long slow dawn.

Furiosa had made a life’s work of not thinking about the deeds her hands had executed. She got the impression that Max had made a life’s work of carrying his deeds on his back. The failures he horded close to his chest, and revealed only in guilty bursts of words, while she buried hers in the dead ground where nothing grew.

Not long before the dawn finally lit the broad horizon, Max began to dream. He twitched, his feet jerking inside of his boots, his fingers tightening over her hip, and his eyelids creasing. She laid her stump on his chest, gently rubbing back and forth, and pushing her body against his until he settled and turned his face toward hers. When he opened his eyes, minutes later, his eyes crinkled at the edges and his lips curled upwards, his nose almost brushing hers. While she fought to keep whatever frightened words were lodged in the back of her throat from escaping, he reached round to brush her jaw with one hand, his fingers lingering just a moment, before his hand slipped away. Though she might have stayed there for an unknowable time, she let their bodies pull apart, and as they climbed to their feet, they found themselves drifting to opposite sides of the Interceptor, beginning their own morning rituals.

While Max worked to drive the metal stakes beneath the Interceptor, and worked at digging her out on the far side, Furiosa sat cross legged by the charred remains of the fire, breaking the guns apart and cleaning them as best she could. As Max dug further, he tossed his jacket toward her, and rolled his sleeves up over his arms. Furiosa only hesitated for a moment before she pulled it over and slid her arms through the sleeves, protecting her skin from the beating sun and scouring wind.

“Think we’re about ready,” Max called after noon, brushing his hands together and scrutinising his handy work.

Furiosa brought him water and took a good look at what he’d achieved, nodding approvingly while he guzzled down half a canteen. He offered it back but she stalled him with a hand and circled round to the levers.

It was hard work. Honest, like the kind she did when she had first crawled back from the Yard Master’s clutches as a girl. It was a work that would have built respect if she had been toiling shoulder to shoulder with a War Boy, but beside Max was just hard and tiring under the hot sun. The jacket sheltered their guns from the heat.

The Interceptor finally righted herself with an almighty groan, sending up a cloud of dust that settled in Furiosa’s eyes and throat and lungs. She coughed and spluttered, while Max wheezed and scrubbed at his face. In a few quick movements he hoiked his shirt up over his head, using the relatively clean inside to wipe the dust from his eyes and mouth.

Furiosa found herself watching his bare skin, the movement of scars over stomach, and the broad set of his shoulders as he shook dust from his hair and the beginning of his beard. Those blue eyes glanced up to see her staring and for a moment he hesitated, before he smiled at her and balled the shirt up, throwing it to her with exaggerated force. She found herself chuckling, catching the shirt as he almost swaggered back to his car.

As he passed, she saw the tattoo. The neat, block-print words on his shoulder were crossed with red lines, systematic, up and down, as far as a man might reach his own back with a blade.

She moved quickly, too quickly in all likelihood because he almost jumped as she pressed herself against his back, swinging her left arm over his shoulder to hold him, and tracing the fingers of her right down those old and fresh scrapes. When she pressed her lips against the path her fingertips walked, Max stiffened like his spine was a steel bolt, and she pressed her forehead against the valley between his shoulderblades, closing her eyes.

There were not enough Joes to kill in this world. Not enough Yard Masters to shoot in the head. Not enough women to save.

After a moment, Max reached up to her arm and pulled it down, holding lightly to the crook of her elbow as he stepped out of her reach, turning on the balls of his feet to face her. With his other hand, he reached round to the nape of her neck, where his fingers traced a long straight line down the raised flesh of her brand. She twisted her elbow so it was her stump resting in his palm then she reached up to clasp his hand with hers. Slowly, because of the thousands of days that had taught her this lesson of caution, she brought his hand down to the waistband of her pants, and as his eyes narrowed in confusion and his lips formed a protest, she tugged her shirt upwards, and drew his fingers over the old, old scars that lay between her hips.

Max’s expression changed as he locked the emotion away behind a tight jaw and hooded eyes. These scars that Joe had gifted and the Yard Master reviled met almost no reaction from Max, just the trace of his fingers once before he let his hand return to her neck, and he leaned in close to push his forehead against hers.

“You and I would destroy this world before we had avenged what was stolen from us,” he murmured.

She closed her eyes, holding him closer. If you can’t fix what’s broken . . .

Max lifted his head a fraction, just enough to part them. “We can tear this road apart. Or. We can go home. Try. To build something.”

She licked her lips. “Will you help?”

For the space of a few heartbeats, Max looked past her shoulder, to the horizon and all that lay beyond. When he returned his gaze to her he nodded. “Together,” he said.

They watched one another, and Max swallowed hard, his grip on her arm tightening just a fraction. It was a long, slow peeling apart, one that left her feeling as though she’d lost her hand all over again, and Max was moving in short, jerky movements towards the car.

“I’m going hunting,” she managed, and Max grunted. She put distance between them as quickly as she could, her strides eating the land that lay between her and her kill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, time for some explanation. This was not where this fic was supposed to go, but as I got into Furiosa's head I felt this mounting rage against Max. "Together. We might come across some redemption." He sells her this idea, then leaves in the end. And I get it completely as a film-maker's choice, because that's the archetype, but it kept gnawing at me until we got here. 
> 
> I listened to Josef Salvat's cover of 'Diamonds' way too much when writing this one. https://youtu.be/_koFbsnw_PM
> 
> I reckon there is one, maybe two more chapters left. Let me know what you thought, because I found this one very cathartic to write.


	13. Excalibur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is what men want. Companions and isolation, terror and adoration.
> 
> All the treasure they name and all the treasure they don’t.
> 
> This is what men want.

In the early night, the Interceptor growled her waking cry, and Furiosa cheered, patting Max on the back. She turned back to their feast of lizard and turned the spits on the fire.

Max cut the engine and came to sit beside her, sitting close. They had been fighting a long silent argument over the jacket ever since the night had turned cold. Max had won by virtue of sheer mulish stubbornness, downright ignoring the leather until Furiosa had grumped something under her breath that sounded like ‘no sense in wasting it’, and had pulled the jacket on.

 Now he was cold and found himself irritated at the Citadel’s people for never travelling prepared. Too used to high walls at night, too used to a base to come home to. And he also cursed the family he’d given his blanket to at the last trade stop, because it had been a bad trade, a quart water for the blanket and his labour on their truck. But it was the Citadel he cursed most, the Citadel that made people soft.

After a moment, he smiled at his own ornery thoughts.

“What?” Furiosa asked, her shoulder brushing his.

He shook his head and then reached over to drape his arm around her shoulders, maximising the transaction of heat between them.

And because it felt good.

Max hadn’t lived this long lying to himself. Furiosa wriggled from the jacket and laid it over their knees, reaching forward to turn the spit again. “Needs more time,” Max said.

“Last night you charred it,” she said, pulling the spit from the fire. “This is edible.”

“That’ll make you sick.” He shook his head when she offered him a bit. “Leave mine there.” She chuckled and settled back against his side, working her way through the greasy flesh. “Did you guys have that . . .” he thought for a moment, and Furiosa let him remember the words which she continued to eat, “There were lice or something. They’d bury into the flesh. You’d find them in food. Did you guys have that? It was years ago.” Not long after Jessie and Sprog, in fact.

“No,” Furiosa said softly. “Don’t think that we did.”

“Might have been further east.” When his own food was black and crusty, he lifted the spit and began to eat. When the dingoes howled, he paused, searching the darkness beyond the fire for the tell-tale flash of eyes.

“We’ll sleep in the car tonight,” Furiosa said in a low voice. “I don’t think they’ll come any closer.”

He nodded and murmured his agreement, finishing the last of his meal and tossing the spit back into the fire. He wrapped his arm back around her shoulders, reluctant to give up the luxury of stretching his legs out just yet, reluctant to give up the pleasure of being pressed side to side with Furiosa. He’d stare the dingoes out a little longer for that.

“Did you live in a town?” Furiosa asked, her voice a gentle patter against his chest.

He watched the shadows beyond the fire. His memory of that place was no more than child’s idea of a highway, an innocent’s idea of home. He might not even have been Nux’s age when he put it to his back and gunned the accelerator and left it all behind, except for the ghosts, who always seemed to be waiting wherever he ended up. “I don’t know if it was a town,” he said at last. “It was houses and a clinic and a station that we thought we were police in.”

“The Vuvalini used to say they left when the first bombs dropped. It was . . . a badge of honour, I think. That they got out so early. While the world died slowly around them.”

“Good for them.”

“Hmm. Maybe.”

The dingoes howled again and Furiosa shifted to look at him and he looked at her. She smiled. “We need to get in the car,” she said, and Max sighed heavily. Furiosa was on her feet faster than he was and he accepted her hand to help him stand. It was hard to climb into the Interceptor, to brush the sand and clods of clay from her seats and fold himself into her protection. “Do you want to sleep first?” Furiosa asked him and he shook his head, handing the jacket over to her. After a few minutes, he heard her breathing slow and he propped his arm against the driverside window, studying the black horizon around them.

After a while, with no more howls, he decided instead to watch Furiosa sleep, which was more pleasing, and infinitely more likely to keep him awake. Beneath the cover of his jacket, he knew there lay a scar between her hips. He wondered if her child had lived longer than his. If she’d held . . .

His throat closed and tightened and he found himself blinking the tears from his eyes. He stared out at the night, slowly darkening each image in his mind until he was only a salt pillar guarding the desert.

In the morning, when he was scraping the red dirt from windscreen, Furiosa packed the backseat with guns and water. She approached his back with heavier steps than usual, and murmured something just before she slid her hands over his back and pulled him around to face her. Her smile was like a grace, and she slipped her hand up to his scruffy jaw and leaned in for a kiss.

Max braced his legs against the Interceptor and leaned back, letting the smell of her fill his head, letting her lips tease at his, and he planted his hands against her waist. She fit so well against him he might have been carved for her. She latched to his bottom lip, sucking just a moment, her teeth gently scraping as she pulled away, staying between his hands with a downright dangerous smile on her kiss-reddened lips. So he leaned in again, to feel the peak of cupid’s bow beneath his lip, and the  swell of her tongue against his. Though he kept his hands light on her hip, she pushed in closer against him, positioning her legs between his, and her stomach against his, and her arms looping around his neck. He had been stretched and beaten into this shape, like a leather holster for a pistol, and now she fit inside him, to be protected from the dust and world, so she might leave his embrace as deadly as ever.

Furiosa made a sound part way between a whine and laugh against his mouth and she pushed down on him, so he sat on the Interceptor’s hood and let her stretch out on top of him, her kisses hardening and deepening, her hand no longer soft against his neck but grasping at the skin exposed where his shirt had ridden up from his belt. He let his hands rise to the belt at her waist, and down under the hot black seat of her pant to cup her ass in his palms, holding the rounded muscles between his fingers and feeling them work as she dragged her knees up to straddle him, and brought her kisses down to the unbearded skin of his neck.

He found himself staring up at the bright, unbroken blue of the sky, his mind near coming apart at the seams as she worked her hand beneath his belt and brushed fingers between the hair there, circling the base of him while he sucked in a deep breath and nearly shouted, “this is a good way to get us both killed out here.”

“Won’t take long,” she murmured, before her hand locked around him and slid him out through his open fly, her fingertips stretching over the underside of him, the tip, and back down. She kissed him again, while her hand teased and squeezed, all gentle and torturous. When she couldn’t doubt how hard he was, she slipped her hand between her legs and then returned her hand to his balls, slicking her own wetness over his shaft.

She was right in that it didn’t take long, but it was all of an eternity to him before he came hard and loud into her hand, no doubt sending all the bugs and lizards scurrying for miles. While Furiosa breathed heavy on his neck, her air blowing against his skin in laughing puffs, Max grew slowly aware of his head burning on the black metal of the bonnet, and the sounds of the desert around them, and the stupidity of taking their eyes off their horizon even if only for a few minutes.

Furiosa kissed his parted lips once, with great tenderness, and climbed off of him, crouching to wipe her hand off with dust. Max remained crucified on his car, with the vague memory that he had never really liked finishing on a woman’s hand, and raised his head just enough to see her.

“Ready to go?” she asked, hands on hips, and the nonchalance only spoiled by how her pants sat lower on her waist, tugged about by his fingers.

“I . . . might need a minute.”

“Well whenever you’re ready.” She patted his bad knee and circled the car to check for any kit they’d left behind, or perhaps just to give him time to tuck himself back into his pants and sit up, but by the time he’d done that she was leaning against the Interceptor, her arms crossed over its roof, metal hand reattached. It was the first time she’d worn it since they had stopped moving, and it was oddly strange to see, more like a fetter than a freedom.

He shook his head. “You’re driving,” he muttered, and as she passed him he managed to get a swipe at her ass, which made her laugh, and made him growl. It might take him another night or so, but he was determined to wreak a little devastation of his own.

It felt strange to sit in his car’s left hand seat, but not at all strange to have her sitting on his right, and perfectly normal to watch her ease the Interceptor back onto the road, gentle with the engines and soft on bruised tyres. He kicked his foot onto the dash and closed his eyes.

 

***

 

It was a long day’s drive, but by the next morning the red dirt had given way to yellow sand, and the road began to dip and rise with the rougher terrain.  Furiosa liked sitting behind the Interceptor’s wheel, and liked even more how Max would watch her drive like dying man eyes a drink of water, but between the two of them they drove through the day and the night and the day and the night.

It was she who was behind the wheel when they came to the road’s one and only junction, where three roads met in a twisted ‘y’, with the ruins of a gas station in the fork. She slowed so much the engine was idling as she coasted up to the evidence of the old world.

Max leaned forward, resting his forearms on the dash and squinting at the sun bouncing off the dust road. After a moment, he pointed down the road. “Citadel’s that way,” he said, watching her.

She looked at him, clasping her hands on the wheel’s apex. After a moment of dry mouthed anxiety, she nodded down the opposing road. “What’s down that way?”

Max didn’t look. Blue eyes stayed on hers. She liked blue. There wasn’t enough of it on the ground, and so much of it in the unreachable sky. Max shook his head gently. “There’s vengeance and blood and pain and a quick death.” He leaned closer and pointed his finger once again down the Citadel’s road. “Down there? There’s a baby.”

She let her forehead rest against his. “This isn’t a test.”

To which Max responded by reaching over and twisting the wheel, so when she pumped the gas, the Interceptor rolled toward the Citadel, and the baby, and all the responsibility and work that lay that way. Her hand shook from the realisation she had been so close to turning away, to a life beneath stars and living off bullets and blood. Leaving was such an easy thing to do.

By the end of the fourth day a red flare went up from a dune on their right. She watched it arc in the sky and Max drove a little faster, as much as the Interceptor would allow.

The Citadel’s green towers grew in the distance, and they were met by a buggy and pair of bikes, war boys aiming guns toward them. Max rolled to a stop and held his hands up while Furiosa reached for the pistol beneath the dash.

“It’s Furiosa!” one of the bikers shouted, and the guns were dropped. They were escorted into the Citadel’s sheltered land and she found herself surprised at what her moon away had done to the place. Dag’s farm was neat and ordered, with Wretched bowed over and tending it, and someone running toward them at great speed, shouting something that Furiosa didn’t quite catch as she climbed from the Interceptor.

When the straw hat blew off in the wind, she saw the braids of red and grinned.

Capable reached them and launched herself into Max’s arms, so hard he stumbled from the force of it, and then she looped her arm out to catch Furiosa’s neck and pull her closer. Max opened his embrace to her too and she stepped into the hold, gently pressing her steel arm against Capable’s back.

“Toast said you’d be okay,” Capable managed, voice suspiciously thick.

Max glanced at Furiosa with a raised eyebrow and said, “Of course we are.”

It took Capable a moment or so to step away, and when she did she dashed her hands over her cheeks. Furiosa’s metal hand responded to the nerves that ended on her stump and twitched to reach out and catch her, keep Capable close. It was the kind of instinct that she had forgotten how to control, especially with this old beast of an arm.

The platform was being lowered and Max tapped one of the smaller war pups on the shoulder and pointed to the Interceptor. “Think you can roll that on? Slow, now,” and the boy practically fell over himself in delight and gratitude, while his companions begged to sit in the car with him for the thrilling ride that would last all of twelve feet.

She could see the man on the platform now, his arms folded over his lumpy chest and his lopsided smile watching her. Scrap stepped off before the platform had settled and greeted her with a hug, tight and firm, slapping her back. He turned to Max when he was done and smacked the taller man’s shoulder, while Capable grinned from ear to ear. Capable looped her arm around Furiosa’s and walked with her onto the platform as the car rolled on, Max and Scrap following along behind. As the platform cranked upwards, she had to resist the desire to turn and check Max was still beside her. When her resolve cracked and her head snapped round, she found him sitting on the bonnet of the Interceptor, watching her with his strange half-smile.

She nodded.

Inside the cool of the Citadel, the boys started to fawn over the Interceptor, and Max left them with a warning about hidden guns. They crossed the bridge to the central tower, to be met by Corpse and Dag, both waiting at the archway with great smiles on their faces, and Dag holding a tiny bundle.

“Ohhh,” Furiosa said, quite unwillingly, and she hesitated, her feet faltering on the wooden bridge. Max gave her shoulders a gentle push and while Corpse greeted Furiosa in the old Vuvalini way, Max was ruffling Dag’s hair and kissing her cheek, and bowing his head over the babe in arms. Furiosa crept closer, and Dag obligingly revealed the little face swaddled in blankets. He had a little crop of dark hair and his mother’s nose, and he was more perfect than any child she’d ever seen.

“His name is Nux,” Dag said quietly, seemingly lost in her baby’s very presence. “And he is mine.”

“He is . . .” Furiosa swallowed. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say. The words they usually used to describe babes felt wrapped up with the tyke’s father, and her tongue rebelled.

“He is mine,” Dag said again simply, and she glanced up at Furiosa as if only just now realising she was back. Dag frowned for a moment, and then at Max, and then back at Furiosa. She clucked her tongue suddenly. “Come on. Cheedo needs to see you.”

Furiosa knew where their little leader would be, but the walk to the vault was slow, with both she and Max paying more attention to little Nux than the path before them, and several people stopping to say hello or welcome them home. She could feel the toll that took on Max, and she couldn’t say their attention sat well with her either.

But . . . there was a baby. Max was right about that at least.

One of those who stopped their party was Ellie, or at least it was Dog who bounded up to Max with a wagging tail and, unexpectedly to Furiosa at least, received a scratch behind his ears for his trouble. Ellie stood in the narrow corridor, cleaner, with a smile on her face and Zoe in her arms. Furiosa nodded to both, and turned the corner to the great glass walled hallway that led to the vault.

It was not much changed, except for looking a little more well used. Cheedo descended the steps with a broad smile and both hands extended, one for Max and one for Furiosa. Corpus still sat in the corner, she noticed, but even he seemed pleased to see her.

“I’m so glad you’re home,” Cheedo said.

But it was the woman walking down the stairs behind Cheedo that Furiosa focussed on. Toast had no eyes for anyone else, marching with heavy tread and swinging fists. She squared off in front of Furiosa, drew her right hand back and cracked it across Furiosa’s jaw with enough strength to make Furiosa see stars. She tested the gape of her jaw and shook her head, rubbing her hand over the already tender spot. “I maybe deserved that,” she said.

“If you ever . . .” Toast gritted her teeth hard and looked at the floor between them.

Furiosa placed her hand on Toast’s neck and leaned in to kiss her forehead. “I’m sorry,” she said, while Toast gripped her shoulders.

“We’re all here now,” Cheedo said mildly, which seemed like a heavy rebuke to Toast, who nodded her head and seemed cowed until she caught sight of Max.

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten you,” Toast snapped, pointing a finger at him.

Max looked distinctly alarmed, and Furiosa’s jaw throbbed in sympathy.

Toast looked around at all of them, Cheedo by her side, Dag and Capable smirking by the door, and Furiosa still rubbing her face, and she shook her head. “You are not forgiven either,” Toast said archly. She stormed past them. “I’m going to go reassure my scouts,” she said, and with a shrug of apology, Scrap trailed along after her.

Cheedo was shaking her head, a kind of fondness on her face that Furiosa had rarely seen. It disappeared quick, and Furiosa found herself wondering a little, but Cheedo was already talking about food and water.

And after that, Furiosa thought a bed might be offered. She glanced at Max, who had already decided it was time to play with little Nux and had stolen him from his amused mother to coo and chirrup and ask about things like sleeping and feeding.

Slowly, Furiosa eased herself down to sit on the stair.

“Good to have you back, Furiosa,” Corpus said in a quiet voice and she looked at him sharply. He grimaced and seemed uncertain of himself, so she accepted his words with a nod, and then Max was bringing Nux to her and speaking nonsense in a soft voice.

“Yes this is our Furiosa, yes it is, you need to meet her now,” he was saying, and while she wrestled to remove her steel arm, he crouched down beside her and then when she was free, he shifted the babe to her arms.

Nux stirred for a moment, and Furiosa held her breath, but as Dag came to sit beside her, Nux settled, and slept, and Dag started asking where they had been and what they had done and why they had taken so long. When Furiosa answered, it was in the same sing-song voice, all to keep the babe from waking. After hearing the story, Dag recovered her child and scolded Furiosa gently for being so reckless, for holding Nux when she was so dirty, and for not telling the whole story about whatever had happened in the desert between her and Max.

Even Cheedo smirked at that one, while Max maintained a carefully composed blank expression that revealed nothing of the way he’d prostrated himself beneath her hand.

“Go bathe,” Capable said, “dinner will be here when you’re back.” When Max was about to leave the vault at this, Capable cleared her throat and pointed to Furiosa, and she showed him the way, walking slow and steady to the baths on the level below.

She shivered as she stepped into the steamy heat, the low rock ceiling almost grazing her scalp in places. It had been thousands of days since she’d been in here, but it had changed some since then.

“We don’t have to be here,” Max said quietly.

She shook her head. “I’m not wasting warm water,” she said, her voice harsh.

The first thing she noticed was a child sized shirt left behind on the low rocky bench, and then next, Max lifted a doll in a white dress from the piled towels.

“The children must use it,” she said, approaching the bubbling pool. It was a system of air jets, she remembered. She also remembered the way it felt. Quickly, she started to strip, discarding her belts and shimmying from her pants, while Max watched her languidly, his hips cocked to take the weight off his bad leg. She met his gaze as she peeled off the strips of her top, and then he was enraptured by how she unbound her breasts, and he bit his bottom lip in unconscious need.

Free of all modesty, she turned and climbed into the pool, sliding in up to her waist and groaning aloud at how good it felt. At the sound of her moan, she heard a belt drop to the floor and she suppressed a laugh by crouching and submerging her head beneath the bubbling warm water. In the peace beneath, she scrubbed her hand over her head, feeling the filth of the road start to lift.

The water rippled and pushed against her as Max entered and she sat upright, the water streaming from her head down her face and neck and onto her shoulders as he swam toward her with long strokes of his arms. He stopped within arm’s reach and ducked his head beneath, sending waves of bloody red dirt streaming from his skin as he did so. When he emerged, gasping with pleasure, she pressed a bar of soap against his chest, and he blinked down at the strange white object, before meeting her gaze with his lips slightly parted in a dare.

She accepted by running the bar across his chest, making it as red as the dirt, but she worked hard, her hand running backward and forward until the bubbles were foaming over his nipples and in the groove of his breastbone and everywhere in the bubbles around him. His breathing was ragged and uneven, and occasionally his body would react to her touch with a twitch of muscle and clench of fist that sent little ripples into the pool around them. She found herself explaining, of all things, the plumbing, how the pool drained and filled each morning, unless you stopped it, how the decadence of it used to infuriate her before Capable had built the reservoir below. To keep themselves submerged up to their chests they had to keep their knees bent and it was an unsteady arrangement, given to ebbing and flowing with the pool’s currents. When she circled around to do his back she ended up paddling a somewhat lopsided circle and had to catch herself by hanging to his waist by her stump.

Max groaned.

“I like this,” she whispered, running the soap over his back. “I like what I do to you.”

Max’s reply was wordless, but assenting, and when she exerted a gently pressure on the top of his shoulder he ducked under the water obligingly, popping back up with a gasp. He had turned beneath the suds, and now faced her, his hair hanging in sopping curls over his forehead. His gaze turned to the soap in her hand, and then back to her. While her fingers tightened over the bar, he swept his hands forward to send him back just a bit. “May I?” he asked.

She opened her mouth to say ‘yes’, but it didn’t quite make it that far out. Instead she turned. “My back,” she allowed, and when Max’s hand recovered the soap from hers, she shivered.

He was slow to start, cleaning the soap beneath the surface for a while, but then she felt his hands on her shoulders, above the water’s surface, teasing the suds up between his fingers. He worked on the exposed skin of her shoulder for so long the skin above her collarbone began to dry and chill, but by the time his hands slipped down her spine her shoulders no longer knew the meaning of tension. She hummed in appreciation as he paid the same attention to her back. It was not sexless. She couldn’t help but be aware of what grazed her buttocks whenever the current brought them too close, or the sheer feeling of his physicality near her, but it was nothing like her memories of the old bastard.

“Can I do your hair?” he asked in her ear and when she nodded he ran the soap over her too-long buzz cut. He guided the suds between her own curls, back behind her ears, and all down the nape of her neck. When he was done, he held the back of her head to support her in the water as she let her legs float up in front of her, rinsing the dirt of the road from her hair. When she righted herself she turned so he could do her front, and he was all but reverent as he soaped up her breasts, his hands as gentle on her nipples as they were when they held Nux.

She could hear her own breath grow uneven and hitched, and she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. If she did, she’d need to please him, and so she kept her eyes part closed, just feeling the slide of their bodies against one another.

“Furiosa?” he murmured, one hand on the small of her back to hold her in place and the other slipping down to her hip bone and wanting to go lower.

She stiffened and he released her, the motion in the water served to push them apart and she opened her eyes to find him smiling at her, just a smile, no heartbreak or desperation. She turned and pushed her foot against the pool’s base, propelling her backwards into his arms. He grunted when her back made contact with his chest, but steadied them quickly enough. She ran her hand down his arm to lace their fingers together, then pulled their hands down together between her legs.

He murmured something into her neck she didn’t catch, and mightn’t have been words at all, so she released his hand and curved her arm up behind her head and cupped the back of his neck with her palm while his fingers slowly explored the tops of her thighs, his other hand pressed against her belly, and his teeth scraping over her earlobe, making her sigh.

“Yes?” he asked, his hand cupping the rise of pubic bone and when she managed a ‘yes’ of her own his fingers slid between her lips and she wondered if he could feel how unbearably hot she was running, how wet she was beneath the water, and if he couldn’t feel that he had to feel the jerk of her hips trying to push him deeper. He was slow, and kissed her neck and her shoulder while he barely explored any further than her lips, and only around the hot and anxious flesh of her nerve endings. If he had any knowing of how she was going to burn up from this, he would stop, or at least finish. At least she’d had the decency to finish him quick. She was squirming against him, nearly slipping away from him between the suds and water and her own treacherous muscles, and she crawled to feel something inside her, to feel something pressing against the sensitive nub of fire that he seemed to almost consciously be circling.

“Max!” she gasped, when it was no longer a matter of want but of blood, and with the next rock of her hips he slid a finger deep within her, stroking the inside of her as he kissed the artery beneath her ear, and his thumb pressured her into coming with a cry that was more animal than human, and surely had to be heard on the floor above, though that would only occur to her later.

And . . . yes . . . it was better than the War Rig.

Max held her against his chest until she had finished shaking, and was just crying, big, fat tears sliding down her cheeks, some of them still carrying road dust. Occasionally, he kissed her neck, and she rested the back of her skull against his shoulder until enough of her had returned to wipe her tears and snot from her face.

At some point – when?! – someone had removed their clothes and left fresh. A razor had also been deposited on the pool’s edge, a silvery cut-throat blade that sat on its own square of towel. She would have liked to be the one to help him remove his beard, but didn’t trust her hand, so while he shaved, she climbed on shaking legs from the pool. Whoever had chosen clothes for them had a wicked sense of humour. She’d been left with a blue shirt, one of the Vuvalini items, and a pair of tan cargo pants that was also vaguely reminiscent of her childhood, but not so easily placed. Max had been given a cream shirt and a pair of war boy leathers,  and she held the clean material up to show him as he sliced the beard from his cheeks. Max just raised his eyebrows. “Go on without me,” he said, rinsing the blade in the water and lifting it to his throat once more.

She nodded, then hesitated, leaning against the doorway. “Thank you,” she whispered.

He flicked suds from the blade with an expert hand. “For what?”

“You know,” she scolded softly.

“Go,” was his only reply, so she did, even though some of her wanted to go back and help him feel like she had, her still quivering body, and still ragged throat, convinced her to climb the stairs instead.

In all her days she had never seen so many people in the main vault. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen so many people sitting, eating, together, men and women and children, the half lives and full lives, the Wretched and the Citadel people. Tricky pounced as she emerged, guiding her to heavy cushions propped up on one wall between Dag and Capable, and then the woman forced a plate of food into Furiosa’s hand. “Try my dumplings,” she said confidentially. “Made fresh just for you.”

“Thank you,” Furiosa said, sincerely, but she sank onto the pillows with utter weariness in her bones.

Dag, feeding little Nux, leaned over. “There’s a rumour she made a cake.”

“Cake?” Furiosa repeated. She caught sight of Corpse on the far side of the room, explaining something animatedly to some pups and one of the mothers. Whatever it was, it required pointing to several major arteries. A little further around the circle and Ellie was sitting crosslegged, Zoe sitting in the sanctuary there, while Scrap was telling a story that had the little girl’s eyes wide as tyre rims, and Ellie desperately trying not to laugh out loud. Scrap held up his left arm, fist clenched, and then pointed at Zoe’s twisted little hand, and the little girl stared at the hand with an open mouth. When Scrap laughed she raised her twisted hand up in triumph, and grinned fiercely at him while he slapped his palm gently against hers.

Ellie looked like she might burst from the happiness of it.

To Furiosa’s left, on the stair, Cheedo was sitting cross legged, a plate of food resting on one knee and Toast’s hand resting on her other. Both the Imperator and the Fragile were listening to something Corpus was saying, their faces serious, until suddenly Cheedo laughed, and Toast was rolling her eyes and looking away, while Corpus chuckled to himself.

Capable nudged her arm. “When they came back with the Rig, Toast marched right up to Cheedo and kissed her,” she murmured. When Furiosa looked at her, she shrugged. “It used to happen that way, didn’t it? Figures it would be Toast though.”

Furiosa glanced back at the pair, still just sitting beside one another, only Toast’s hand resting on Cheedo’s knee. “Why?” she asked quietly.

“She was the bravest,” Dag said softly. “After Angharad, she was always the bravest.”

Furiosa slipped a dumpling into her mouth and nearly coughed it back out as the flavour burst over her tongue, like nothing she’d ever tasted, and across the room she heard Tricky guffaw and clap her hands together.

She was still coughing when Max emerged from the corridor, dressed in white, clean shaven, and just clean. He scanned the room, met her gaze, and picked his way across the crowd, saying little to those who moved out his way or greeted him. He settled between Furiosa and Dag and rested his back against the wall. He reached for one of the dumplings on Furiosa’s plate and ate with gusto.

“Doesn’t look burned enough for you,” she said, slapping at the back of his hand ineffectually. “Go get your own.” But he didn’t need to, Tricky was already bringing him a plate heaped even higher with various treats than the one she had brought Furiosa, and Max thanked her with an unselfconscious smile that Furiosa had to look away from, and Capable brushed their knees together in silent support.

Scrap was encouraging one of the pups to sing something to Zoe, and the little boy was doing his best to remember the words. One of the others ran into the vault carrying a guitar, but not one of Doof’s, this one a battered brown thing with strings that whipped around its head. Scrap settled with it quickly, a horde of the younger boys and some of the mothers gathering closer, requesting their own choices while he showed the curious Zoe how to brush her hand against the strings and make a noise.

Capable and Dag were leaning behind her to exchange some questions about Scrap’s half life, and she turned her head to see Max. He had somehow ended up with Nux again and seemed more than content winding him. Better Nux than Tricky, the back of her mind suggested, and she took the opportunity to reach over and steal a vegetable from his plate that hadn’t been included on hers. He narrated these evens to Nux while he rocked side to side from the hip.

Scrap seemed to know almost every song that was suggested to him, even one Ellie sang with a thin and quivering voice that Furiosa had never heard in her life, and she’d travelled further than most. As the songs went on and the water jugs were passed around and around the circle, Dag took Nux away to wherever they slept, while Capable got up to dance with some of the pups. Cheedo had graduated to draping her arm over Toast’s shoulders, and Max had his hand on the small of Furiosa’s back, even when Tricky came over with more food that they both gratefully declined.

She leaned toward him. “Do you want to go to bed?” she whispered.

He glanced at the crowd. “I want to sleep,” he said, and when she nodded and took his hand, they made a not-altogether unseen departure from the crowd. She couldn’t help but feel the gathering might grow louder, happier, and somehow freer without them.

She led the way through the Citadel’s twisting corridors, Max’s hand resting in hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Penultimate chapter, folks - just one more to go. It may even get done by the end of tomorrow . . . 
> 
> Me: This piece of writing is obscene. It’s pornographic.  
> Dag: No, it’s erotically inclined


	14. The Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is how we die. With patience, heartbeats, triggers and blade.
> 
> Till in the earth our dust will lie.
> 
> This is how we die.

 

Furiosa woke because Max was dreaming, his body jerking against hers on the nest of blankets they’d created on the floor. While they had drifted off back to back, like her quarters were still the exposed road, during the night, he had turned toward her and stretched out behind her back. It wasn’t an embrace, but it was damned close, and as he squirmed she woke.

It was maybe only the fifth or sixth night they had slept beside one another, twelve if you counted the first drive.

It felt far longer.

She was about to extricate herself from his arms when he buried his face in the curls at the nape of her neck and either the dream went deeper or it faded, for he relaxed, and slept more peacefully.

She dozed in the early dawn light that streamed in the window, her arm folded beneath her cheek, and listened to the nothing that could be heard behind all this rock. Though it wasn’t quite nothing, just muffled, and far away, and considerably happier sounding than it was hundreds of days ago, although that might have been more her dreams, that slipped in and out from her head, dreams of being on the road, of being in the green place, even of being in the vault, but no dreams of blood.

When she woke again it was because Max was settling back down beside her, lowering himself to the blankets and stretching his back out with a soft sigh. He held his arm out to welcome her closer and she did so, turning on her back and lying at an angle so her head was pillowed by his shoulder.

“Let’s stay here,” he said, to himself more than her, staring at the dark ceiling.

“And I had to work so hard to make you come back,” she said in jest, but the moment the words were out she regretted them. That wasn’t what he’d meant, and was closer to the reason why he’d left before. “Sorry,” she said to his stillness.

He squeezed her shoulder, more to buy himself more silence than to reassure her. “I should get a room here.”

Furiosa bit her tongue. She wanted to say that she had only had this room for a few moons, and that he had no need of anywhere to sleep that wasn’t by her side, and that she wanted him beside her always like a treasure . . . she covered her eyes with the rise of her elbow, just to block that thought from ever escaping.

“Hmm?” he prodded.

“I don’t want to . . .” she swallowed. “Keep. You here,” she managed. “Not like a prisoner. Or one of Joe’s wives.” Max laughed, braying harshly and she uncovered her eyes to glare at him. “I’m serious.”

“Well,” he snorted, “When you chase me across the desert for weeks because I’ve blown up one of your war parties, and then string me up for blood, I’ll cry mercy,” he said, and squeezed her shoulders again, this time for her. She didn’t know she could say she exactly liked his cavalier attitude, which was a little too much like the glib ‘then you go on without me’ he’d said as he’d gone for the Bullet Farmer. She needed, more than she cared to admit, to have him happy and wanting to be beside her.

Which was strange enough, because ‘happiness’ had been something she’d thought only children felt.

So they lay on the floor together, occasionally repositioning, every now and then taking care of some bodily need – except the ones that they were both thinking of, in between thoughts of what was going on beyond the stone walls, and thoughts of things they’d lost, and things they weren’t sure how to live with again.

 

***

 

By the end of the first seven days at the Citadel, Max made himself a vow. When the people of the Citadel started to follow him too closely, when scars on his back itched, when he saw too many ghost, he was allowed to say to Furiosa he would be back tomorrow and head out in the Interceptor, and he wouldn’t let her fear hold him down.

On the eighth day he tested the vow, and had to amend it. He was allowed to feel guilty too, and allowed to kiss her forehead. He promised he really would be back, while she wore her doubt like war paint. Maybe it was only because he knew how her mind worked. No one else seemed concerned as he took the Interceptor away, and he gunned the engine harder than he should have to take him far, far away from people.

He slept worse than he’d had in days, and returned to the Citadel by noon with more of a limp and a crick in his neck, but was able to lift a pup onto his shoulders as he pointed out the Interceptor’s weak spots to the block heads who were scowling at what he’d done to their handiwork, and he was able to kiss Capable’s cheek and consult with Cheedo about the spate of thefts between the Wretched and even spar with Toast while hiding his yawns behind his hand.

It had never felt quite so good to lie down next to Furiosa on the blankets. He even stripped his leathers off, a night under the stars reminding him just how safe these walls were. He’d nearly closed his eyes when Furiosa’s hand slid under his shirt. For a moment, his sleepy body and mind warred, before both woke and reversed their ideas. She had barely spoken two words to him since he’d rolled in, and the hand on his stomach was not . . . right.

“I’m tired,” he murmured, turning to see her shadowy outline.

“I could . . .” she began, but finished the thought by straddling his hips and sitting upright, her fingers clenching around his waistband. “You don’t feel tired,” she said, her voice harsh.

They had lit no lanterns before closing the door behind them and he could only see the suggestion of her. It was her weight that convinced him this was real and not a nightmare, because there was precious little in the voice that he recognised. “I didn’t leave because of you,” he said flatly, his hand going to catch at hers.

He heard the breath she took, and the gently scrape of her swallowing her own spit. “Are you sure?” she whispered, strained and disbelieving.

Though they had been sleeping together, that had been more or less all, unless you counted a few lazy kisses and caresses in the eyes of people who might otherwise get the wrong impression. Furiosa had her own deeply buried ideas of property. He hadn’t thought she had seen him watch her, or noticed how he so often had to let her go on without him so he could take care of his own problems.

Apparently she read him as easily as he read her.

“I like being alone,” he said, and with a little force tugged her hand off his pants.

“I don’t need to be pitied,” she said, all gravel and guzzoline.

“And I don’t need to be bribed,” he retorted.

After a long minute that stretched into the night, she got off of him, and lay down beside him, waiting for his arm beneath her shoulders, to which he obliged.

Furiosa had lived her whole life around people. To her loneliness was an anathema. In truth, she didn’t understand what it was to hate the sight of them.

Later the next day Scrap found him, and they worked on the Interceptor in companionable silence. So the vow was amended again. He was allowed to feel guilty, and required to tell her he just needed to be alone, and it wasn’t her. But somehow, Scrap had a knack for sensing when to send the pups running, and when to invite Max to the Citadel’s heights and pick his brains for song verses and chords, that Scrap seemed to have taken on the role of collecting.

But this thing between them was one of the few skills he had that she couldn’t match. While he knew how to be part of a pair, she had only known the old bastard and then herself. So she would hold him when the other women looked, and kiss him when Toast invited him to train her, and Max wasn’t sure how to help her through it other than ride it out with her.

The Bullet Farm had been quick to resume trading, and supplied them with an extra cache – _gratis_ , said Omen Owen – the day before they took their new Rig to Gastown. Max watched the old man trading with Toast, on the road outside of the Citadel. He kept his shotgun in hand, his own troop of trusted boys, pups and women at his back while Toast laughed and gossiped with the Bullet Farmers. He had always preferred the silent intimidator role, and so held his gun and refused to even notice the gaze of the farmers on him.

Toast sealed the deal by spitting in her palm, and Omen Owen took her hand in his. They said something strange to one another, but whatever it was it made the Bullet Farmers grin and salute her with great fervour, until both parties packed up and drove their opposite ways. Max remained quiet as Toast talked about her plans for tomorrow, how she was going to be the outrider, while Furiosa would drive the War Rig, and Max would be in charge of protecting her. This last was said with a sly grin that Toast maintained for the short drive home. They were all plans he’d heard before, plans he’d had a hand in carving, but he still sought Furiosa out when he returned to the Citadel, and deliberately smiled at Tricky a little too long for Furiosa’s liking, so she kissed him hard after dumping a plate on the table beside him.

That night, he found himself studying their boots, sitting side by side by the clothes they felt safe enough to take off, ready for the morning. The Citadel still stood on ceremony for their War Rig, and one of the pups had stolen his best shirt to wash, delivered it freshly folded, and a jar of black pigment was waiting for Furiosa, who didn’t seem to see it as she entered the room, talking about how Nux had finally smiled for her.

“I might sleep with the Rig tonight,” he said, his voice uneven.

Furiosa stood in front of him, her brows drawn down in honest confusion, before she glanced at their boots and the accruements of war sitting against the wall. Her pretty mouth turned downwards hard. “We’ll be fine. Our scouts say barely anyone made it back to Gastown. Hell we might even need to leave them some help,” she said, gesturing with her steel hand. This was less her opinion than it was the party line they’d all decided on in Cheedo’s vault.

“All the same,” he said, and got to his feet. She stopped him with the metal claw on his stomach, just enough of a barrier to ask him to stay a moment or so longer, no real entreaty.

“I keep thinking about it too,” she said softly,  not seeking out his gaze as it skittered away. “About . . . what if. And the worst case. And the things I’ve never known.” Her voice dropped toward the end and he closed his eyes.

“Furiosa, this might not be the best idea.”

“Why? Because you want it?” Her hand exerted a little pressure on him now. “I want it too.” That was not the first time she’d said it, but the first time he thought it might have meant the imminently near future. “Max,” she said, just hard enough to make him open his eyes and look at her. “You’ve never taken anything from me I hadn’t wanted to give.” And then, with more pressure on his stomach, inviting him to step backward, “I trust you. I _rely_ on you.”

He grimaced. He wanted to feel her ass beneath his hands, and hear her rasp his name, and smell the sweat between her breasts, and all the things that would make tomorrow longer and more difficult. He was already hard, and remembering how her skin felt against his in the pool.

“I know how to cry mercy too,” Furiosa whispered, following his backward steps toward the blankets. And she pulled him in for a kiss that was hungry and fierce. He responded in kind, with his hands sliding down to the seat of her pants, to knead and lift, and make her grin into his lips.

They’d been well practiced at kissing since the road, but Max still felt the wisdom of working through the lower gears one by one, and he ran his thumb over the hollow beneath her ear where would always lean into his touch. He kissed her throat, and the warm, always dusty crook of her neck.

“Max,” she whispered, that he answered with a nuzzle and a hum. “I want you to . . .” she paused, without words she wanted to use on him. He sucked at her skin, making her hiss. “I want you,” she rephrased, and her felt her swallow beneath his kiss. “I want to try _you_ tonight.”

 

***

 

“You’re coming home tomorrow, aren’t you?” Cheedo’s arms wrapped around Toast’s shoulders and she smiled, leaning back into the embrace and feeling Cheedo’s breasts against her shoulders. She was still sitting on the edge of the bed, not quite fully undressed,  but clearly enough to excite her empress. One of Cheedo’s hands had drifted down to tease at Toast’s breast, and Toast felt her nipples tighten in response.

“In our Rig, they’ll be pissing their pants,” she said.

“But you won’t be in the Rig.” This was the point Cheedo had been making for days, wouldn’t Toast be happier inside the Rig, instead of outrider? Wouldn’t Toast like better to be under Furiosa’s wing and Max’s eye? Wouldn’t Toast rather stay at Cheedo’s side?

Toast twisted at the waist to catch Cheedo’s mouth with hers, and tangle her fingers in Cheedo’s braid, pulling back just enough to make Cheedo fall back against the bed, letting Toast crawl atop her.

“Maybe we do the kissing thing?” Cheedo suggested, in a breathless rush.

Toast shook her head, nipping gently with thumb and forefinger up the line of Cheedo’s inner thigh. “I don’t want to,” she said, and Cheedo spread her legs a little wider, welcoming Toast’s hand as it reached her. Toast liked to sit back and watch Cheedo’s face, watch the empress squirm and shiver under Toast’s touch, and feel safe and powerful in these rooms.

Cheedo didn’t seem to need to feel powerful, which was a good thing, Toast thought, because if she’d been the one to sit in the Vault she wouldn’t have been able to resist making all those who had hurt her squirm beneath her fingers.

Cheedo writhed and moaned until she pushed Toast’s hand away and lay back, eyes closed and face slack.

Toast hadn’t felt Cheedo really tighten around her hand like she knew _she_ did when she came, but as Cheedo seemed to enjoy herself anyway, Toast kept that to herself. Cheedo curled up, resting her head in Toast’s lap, and curved an arm around Toast’s waist. “Would you like?” she asked sleepily.

Toast shook her head, running her hand over Cheedo’s hair. “No. Not yet.”

“Okay,” Cheedo said simply.

 

***

 

The bag thumped against her thigh with every step. It hurt, a little, in a blunt and dull way, the constant battering of her impatience.

“Hey.”

She froze, because it was night and she was in the corridors and old habits died hard, but quickly recovered.

Scrap just leaned against the wall of the garage, arms folded. “What are you doing, Capable?” he asked, lazy like and low.

She felt the bag rest against where a bruise was sure to be forming. “Nothing that’s going to effect tomorrow,” she said, and found her voice shaking just a bit.

In the half shadows of the watch guard light, Scrap shook his head. “You’d be surprised what can affect a run, but the way I see it, I owe you one. If I let you walk past me, that’s one sin off my back.”

She frowned, and watched the old war boy as he passed her. She murmured a thanks and waited until he’d cleared the floor before she continued.

 

***

 

Dag liked the company of Ellie, who was quiet and fierce and surprisingly nimble around their plants. She liked how Ellie played with Zoe too, always kissing and hugging and fixing Zoe’s hair.

If there’s someone she’s going to base her mothering on, it’s the mousy silent one, who brought her daughter to the Citadel in a stolen Rig.

Dag paced the greenhouse, rocking Nux in her arms. Ellie watched, just looking at the open door every few heartbeats, checking that her daughter still slept.

“She’s different from you,” Dag said as Nux gurned away. Not unhappy, but certainly not going to sleep through the night any time soon.

“Hmm?”

“Zoe.”

“Yes,” Ellie smiled through the word. “She’s her own little person, isn’t she? Found her trying to poke a creepy today. Don’t worry, I told her we needed all the bugs we can get in this ground.”

Dag nodded along to this, while bouncing on every footstep. “Somehow  thought they’d just be like their parents,” she said. “Thought he might be a little Joe. Don’t know how, now,” and she paused long enough to lose herself in Nux’s bright blue gaze, at least till he started to squall again.

“Nope,” Ellie said softly. “You give them the pieces, but they put themselves together.” Then she smiled broadly as Scrap appeared through the far door and said “Hello,” in a surprised voice, as though the Ace didn’t always finish his evening rounds by checking on them.

“Just thought I’d swing by,” said Scrap, and he made a show of inspecting Nux, before he looked at Dag with a strange expression.

Perhaps wishing she was asleep.

So Dag gave him a smile. “Think I’m going to try putting him down,” she said to no one in particular, and stepped inside the rooms.

 

***

 

She arched up into the fingertips that were working at every knot and ache she’d ever felt between her shoulder blades, and Max pushed her back to her chest, softening the rebuke with a kiss on the nape of her neck.

She groaned, clenching her fists in the blanket, and bit down on the words of pleading that were so close to the surface. If Max was trying to ease every jolt of the road from her spine that she’d ever endured, he was damned close to it, but he bowed his head to kiss her back at intervals just unknowable enough to eat at her control. And undo her.

Max’s palms slid lower, down to the narrowing of her waist, and he pressed a wet kiss against the small of her back, scraping his teeth over her skin, inhaling her like she was the People Eater’s white sand. She muffled her groan by biting the pillow.

He was next at her neck again, she was beginning to get a sense of the things she did that he liked best, and so she tilted her head to one side to give him all the access he wanted to the skin between her ear and shoulder. He didn’t so much kiss as smell, inhale and run his own cheek against her skin. She felt like oil beneath his hands, unable to hold her own shape outside of him, and with no tension left in her.

She turned to her back to see him, his face just inches from hers, and his smile a little broken by his panting. He reached to cup her face with one hand, then, bracing himself on his forearm, let the hand trail down her body.

It was hard to look at him too long, so she let herself blink at the ceiling, and the odd shadows their bodies made on the rocks, in the flickering light of the lantern. They were barely human, more like shifting dunes, driven by the wind. Max’s hand slipped between her legs and he made a noise low in his throat when he found her wet, she groaned at the sound of him. Just another little thing she could do.

Max took her left nipple in his mouth, rolling his tongue around the softest parts of her, while he stroked down against her wet thighs and up inside her in fluttering, near breathtaking moments.

She’d used her hands to kill and she’d used her hands to save. She’d use him to kill and used him to save too. She’d seen Max take on Joe’s most battle hardened allies with a half clip and a limp, and now she saw the way he checked on her after every thirty heartbeats or so, just a look, a raise of an eyebrow.

She clasped his head between palm and stump and drew his face back towards hers, urging him to crawl full atop her, and she hooked one leg over his hip, waiting for that sharp pain of him hitting home.

Max shifted his weight to his good knee, supporting the bad with a pillow, and while she ran her fingers through his hair, he guided himself into her in one slow thrust, his eyes on hers as he pushed home.

It was not, though she shouldn’t have been surprised, painful. It was not like much else in the world, not like their time in the pool, and not like her time as a wife, except in the barest mechanics that made the action of caressing like the action of choking.

He groaned something, and whispered “Yes?” into her mouth.

She nodded, and managed to say ‘yes’, though not with any real consciousness. Her body rebelled from his withdrawal, seeking to pull him back in, and when he was fully inside her she could only stand it for a moment before she had to cry out, and it would start again, slow, piece by piece, with Max’s hands on her neck and ribs, and his lips occasionally against hers, stealing her air, as if he needed to remind her he was there. She tightened her legs around his waist and pulled him deeper until her back tried to break through sandstone and granite to push the parts of that needed to be undone against him.

Tears streamed from her eyes, silent, that Max ran a thumb over, while she let the waves pass over and through her and past her. When she nodded again, he began his thrusts again, shorter and quicker, until he bit on her shoulder and shuddered into her.

She patted his back, wishing she had something more to give him as he eased himself down to her side, breathing hard and shaking.

 

***

 

“Well?” he asked, when he couldn’t keep his curiosity tied in any longer.

Furiosa frowned, contemplating the darkness above them, her hand still gently curved over her breast. Just as was beginning to think his read on the situation was perhaps so off base that he should be leaving, she curled into his side. “It was nice,” she said, like she was testing the words.

He hesitated just a moment before wrapping his arms around her. He’d never been one to chase after compliments, so he kissed her hair and determined to accept that. Until a heartbeat later when he couldn’t. “Nice?”

“Yeah . . .” she said, and chuckled. “It really was.”

“You sound surprised.”

“Didn’t . . . really believe it would be,” she said.

For the sake of the little sanity he had left, he decided he would read that as a compliment. “No mercy needed?” he asked, feeling his consciousness slip away.

She shook her head against his chest, which he also decided he would have to trust. They had spent too much of the night already for him waste time second guessing her. It was nice, and he’d work on that till it was glorious.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I lied, there's another chapter after this one. What can I say? Toast wanted her dues.


	15. The Things Men Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is how we live. All together or together we fall.
> 
> Measured by what we give.
> 
> This is how we live.

“Today we’re going to Gastown!”

The crowd roared.

“Today we’re hauling water!”

The roar was like the rumble of the V8, shaking the stone beneath her feet.

“Today we’re hauling greens!”

Cheedo took a step toward the balcony, and as the crowd assembled below came into view they in turn saw her, and the cheer that went up made the cry for water sounds like a cheerful murmur. They roared so loud she could see the loose stones on the crags shake.

“Wow,” said Zoe from her mother’s arms, and Ellie agreed with a low murmur.

Cheedo glanced to her left, where Dag was sitting with Nux latched to her breast, a preoccupied smile on her face that no amount of cheering or screaming could possibly touch. Dag barely heard the crowd below.

On her right, along with Tricky and some of the other milk mothers, sat Corpus, who was watching the crowd with great interest. She and Corpus had spent long hours discussing what would be said today, and his counsel weighed heavily in favour of following Joe’s script, not to stir the shit, he said, don’t remind them how fragile we are. How fragile _you_ are.

She braced her arms against the chrome pumps, and tried to pick out individual faces in the crowd, tried to tell the pups and former War Boys from the Wretched, no longer so Wretched themselves. Our world is far blurrier than it was, with fewer rules, and a little less power.

Beneath her, the water glittered in the reservoir, and no one was crowding into it. They no longer feared the loss of water.

Stick to the script.

“My friends,” she called, her words being echoed and reverbed around the canyon by the loudspeaker, and the crowd’s roar shifted down a gear, to a low rumble.

They no longer sounded like Joe’s frightened flock.

“Today we are sending water to Gastown!” she cried. “Today I salute my Imperators! Toast!” She swallowed. The small figure atop the bike at the front of the Rig’s guard raised her fist in the air and drew it toward her chest, and the roar of the crowd revved and swelled. “Furiosa!” The boys saluted quick. They liked Toast, sure, but Furiosa they believed in, even if the crowd didn’t cheer her quite so loudly. And now Cheedo hesitated, only for a heartbeat, “and Max,” she added. To her satisfaction, she saw the man riding shotgun in the Rig twitch, and saw Furiosa lean over to say something. There were some cheers, like those on the ground didn’t really know exactly who this was, but if Cheedo named him . . .

She smiled. “And we are sending greens,” she said, letting her voice fall into the silence. She could see she had finally caught Dag’s attention, while Corpus closed her eyes. “You may ask,” Cheedo continued, “Why are we sending greens? When we still struggle to feed ourselves? When we are hungry, why do we feed someone else?”

“ _Cheedo_ ,” Corpus said from the corner of his mouth, while the rumble below them grew deeper, and the small figures atop the Rig looked to one another.

“Why should we care about Gastown?” Other than all that guzzoline they were desperate for. She clenched her fists on the water pumps. “Should we not build our walls high, wait for Gastown to fall? Wait for Gastown to come crawling to us? I. Say. _No_. I say we go to Gastown. We give them what we can. We trade well. We trade honest. Because _we are strong_!”

The cheers began to build, working up through the gears.

“Because we, my friends, we are strong enough to give.” Her knuckles ached, white-clenched around the pump handles. “We are strong enough to help others be strong. And we are strong enough to not fear strength ourselves.”

The cheers broke like a wave over the lip of the reservoir when the pumps were on too long, crashing over the walls of the Citadel, near pushing Cheedo off her feet with the force of their roar.

_With these people behind me, I could crush Gastown and the Bullet Farm with a word. They’d fall, like dominoes, because I give water and I give life and they think that’s so precious that they’d die for me._

On silent feet, Dag had drifted to her side, Nux in her arms. Her elbow brushed against Cheedo’s arm, just a little accidental contact, that no one would mistake for deliberate, and that she and her sisters knew so well.

_It is I who has to make sure they don’t die because of me._

“So today!” Cheedo roared, the words ripping in her throat. “We. Go. To. Gastown!”

The Rig joined the crowd, the horn adding a brassy undertone to the cheering, and her twin V8s opened up, hauling the Water Party out past the Citadel’s reaches. Those left behind were still cheering, sporadic and frenzied. They had no water to chase, and even though the food was sparse, they were all as hungry as each other, and that went a long way to building bridges. She thought she caught snatches of music, drifting up to the tower, and she could see little spirals of people, twirling round and round one another, twos and fours and fives and tens, all holding on to one another.

Dag raised Nux up to her shoulder, patting his back and bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, humming softly, almost along with the snatches of music that floated up, “And the heart it will not be denied, until we’re both on the same damned side,” she hummed, and kissed Nux on the cheek while the little one hiccoughed and gurgled. Dag leaned in to kiss Cheedo’s cheek too. “We’re going to go dance,” she said, “why don’t you come with us?”

Cheedo turned to watch her sister go, a small party following along behind her, including Ellie with Zoe traipsing along hand-in-hand. The little girl was skipping, her withered arm swinging a counterpoint to her little dance.

“You’re going to kill me,” Corpus said flatly. He frowned at her when she glanced at him, her eyebrows raised. “My heart can’t take this.”

“Hmm,” she said. “Have you ever danced?” The little man’s frown deepened and he glanced down at his twisted legs. Cheedo stepped closer to his chair, smiling. “Your father used to ask us to dance, and we used to dance for him, until one of us was pregnant. She’d sit down and watch, too dangerous otherwise.” She could almost see Angharad sitting in what once was the old bastard’s chair, and the wives behind her, those discarded and bred dead. “But they still got to dance, just maybe not in the same way. You can still enjoy yourself.” While Corpus continued to frown, Cheedo found her best smile, the smile his father had favoured the most, the smile his brother had favoured the most, the smile that worked on Toast and Furiosa and Max and Tricky and everyone else.

Corpus shook a finger at her. “Don’t start with me,” he said.

She laughed, her smile growing true. “Please come and dance with me,” she said, and when he sagged in reluctant acquiescence, she took his chair in her hands and started wheeling him to the platform.

 

***

 

The sun flashed off the Citadel’s mirrors, reflected in the Rig’s mirrors, and off the mirrors mounted on Gastown’s towers, far ahead of them.

Max reached to adjust the wing, scowling at it. Furiosa had to hide her smile behind her fist. This Rig had its wheel on the right hand side, like most beasts on these roads, but it was the strangest thing to sit with her metal hand on the shift and her flesh hand against the window. It was strange to feel the sun on her forearm. It was strange to need to adjust the way she shifted the engine up and down. Strange, but not necessarily worse.

It was not strange at all to have Max sitting on her left, with one boot resting on the dash, his hand on his knee, the other just resting on the shotgun’s hilt, and he scowled at the world that dashed past them.

Again, she had to hide the smile that came to her lips unbidden. If she looked closely she could see a red scrape on his neck, almost hidden by his collar. A brand, of sorts, although not one he had protested this morning as she’d pounced while he dressed. There were words she wanted to say to him, things she wasn’t sure he was ready to hear, and they bubbled inside her – confessions and sins she needed him to know.

One day.

“You okay?” he asked suddenly, turning his head to catch her watching him. When she raised her eyebrow he lifted the hand off his knee and waved his fingers, somehow taking in the Rig, the road, their riders, Toast far ahead on her bike, the other riders flanking them all, and the sun that beat down on them all.

She shifted in her seat. “I don’t like leaving a job unfinished,” she said, which made him scowl harder and look back to the road.

“How long has it been?”

“Since the last time?”

“Hmm.”

She ran her knuckles over the sheen of sweat on her upper lip. “Not sure,” she lied.

Max grunted something under his breath and reached up to scratch his back, his fingers drawing deep lines in the fabric of his shirt. “By my count? A little over three hundred days.”

She was sure he knew the days as exactly as she did. She let the Rig rumble ever onwards, letting the silence stretch between them. When she felt the energy start to equalise between them, she said, “The day I met you.” Her throat went dry and she stared hard at the road ahead of her. “Not much I’d trade for that,” she said, harsh and sharp.

“Hmm,” said Max again. Suddenly, he sat forward and glanced behind him, making her look too, and she saw the grin that played on his face just a fraction too late. “No wives in there today, though, right?” he asked, relaxing as she rolled her eyes.

“No, but the day’s young,” she said, settling back into her seat with an arch expression. “So don’t put that shotgun away just yet.”

The look he gave her was more branding than any kiss she’d delivered in the privacy of their chamber and she shivered, even with her shoulder exposed to the sun.

Max, carefully turning back to watch the road and not her, then said, “Wherever you lead, Imperator.”

 

***

 

Scrap was dancing with Zoe in his arms, and Ellie laughed so hard that she had fallen from a rock and landed flat on her arse, crying with laughter and pain while she tried to massage her tail bone, with Corpse laughing too hard to help. All the while, Scrap danced with jerky kicks and jumps, swinging Zoe about in his arms, as if the sight of his lopsided body lugging the girl around was perfectly normal. Only his squint grin gave him away, and Zoe’s squeals of hysteria.

Dag was nestled between two of the older women, one of whom was rocking Nux in her arms. The women loved her little one, almost as much as Max did, and Nux hardly ever slept in a bed, not with so many willing arms to hold him.

Some of the Wretched were trying to teach the pups their dances, their strange twirling and bouncing, while one of the many impromptu bands patiently repeated their stanzas over and over. Dag rested her cheek on her friend’s shoulder, listening to the twang of strings, the rasp of ragged metal, and the voices that made up the difference, all the while the pups struggled to learn the steps.

It was a far cry from sitting hunched over the old bastard’s piano while he spoke of his battles, and demanded his songs.

She found herself needing to hold her son, and retrieved him with only a half-hearted protest. “This is what music is,” she murmured to him, circling the dancers. “When you learn how to dance, I hope you dance with everyone.” Not like your father, she thought.

Across the sand she spotted Cheedo watching her, face carefully impassive. Down at her thigh, Cheedo put her thumb and forefinger together in a circle, her other three fingers arching upwards. _You okay?_

Dag smiled and nodded. When Cheedo asked again, Dag went to join her, and sat under the shelter of the cloths the Wretched had set up around their new leader. “Would you like to hold him?” she asked, and Cheedo seemed to hesitate for a moment before she reached out to take the little one.

“So very small,” Cheedo said.

“Like all seeds are,” Dag agreed, and leaned against her.

 

***

 

“The Bullet Farmers raided us last week.”

While Furiosa listened to this with impassive face, Toast allowed her irritation to show. Much of Gastown was exposed to the unrelenting sun, and the steel and burning plumes seemed to make it feel all the hotter. She could feel the grease drip down from her forehead, and she remembered the Gastown boys wearing their heavy masks as they chased the Rig down, long ago now, how immune they were to the guzzoline fumes.

“You don’t believe me?” the old woman challenged, pointing her scarred and veined hand at Toast. “It was them.”

“Survivors maybe,” Toast allowed. “Not Omen Owen’s.”

“Well you would know. They say the Bullet Farm’s got an Imperator in Cheedo’s lap.” Viv spat into the sand, while Furiosa checked Toast’s reaction with a look.

Toast gritted her teeth.

“Now we have a Rig, we’ll be making runs more frequent,” Furiosa said.

“Do what you like, we’ve got no one left to refine the guzzoline, much less drink your aqua cola,” the burned woman snarled, smearing black, smokey grease over her forehead as she dragged a hand through her patchy hair.

There was a gurgling noise from the Rig and both Imperators checked over their shoulders. Max still stood on the tanker for the best view of the Gastown boy’s work, and they were busy unhooking the water hose, some of them holding their hands under the dripping tap and lapping at their filthy fingers. They were very young, Toast couldn’t help notice, and nor were they all truly Gastown _boys_. She thought she saw some girls in there too.

“You killed our leaders once,” Viv was saying to Furiosa in a low voice, “and then you killed their successors. You’d better find some way of helping us before Omen Owen takes us over.” And to emphasise the point she spat again, this time on Furiosa’s very boots, before she limped toward the Rig and its refuelling. She started snapping at the kids around her, tearing a pair of goggles from her belt and shoving them into a particularly tiny tot’s chest.

Furiosa sighed softly and Toast felt she knew what the Imperator was feeling. Was this what Angharad had meant by no unnecessary kills, then? All the people she saw in Gastown were burned or young, and there was no inbetween.

The inbetween had died for her, or because of her, and now their leader was as unlikely as any other in the wasteland.

“Gastown will need fixing soon,” Furiosa murmured as she started toward the Rig.

Toast fell into step beside her. “Fixing something we broke,” she said, and when Furiosa looked at her, she shrugged. “We did. You and me. We knew the Bullet Farmers would pick us over the Yard Master when we stole the Rig.”

“Hmm.” Furiosa approached the Rig’s cab, Max shadowing her walk from the tanker’s roof. Toast wondered if they even knew they were doing it.

“There’s dying for someone, and dying because of them,” Toast continued, lingering while Furiosa climbed into her Rig. “Maybe we didn’t get that right at the Yard.”

Furiosa didn’t look at her, just the road that lead to the sandstone towers in the distance. “We had no choice,” she said, softly, if not gently.

Max was standing  on the cab’s roof now and he frowned at Toast. “What’re you thinking?”

She squinted up at him, shading her eyes with a hand. “That I have a choice here,” she said, and now Furiosa looked at her too. “Tell Cheedo I’m sorry. I didn’t set out meaning to do this.”

In one fluid movement, Furiosa was down from the cab and towering over her, using every inch of height she hand on Toast’s frame to bear down on her. “Get in that cab.”

“No.” Toast planted her feet, like Max had taught her, and when Furiosa’s hand darted out she deflected it with her forearm, standing her ground. “Furiosa, listen,” she said calmly. “They’re afraid of the Bullet Farm. The Farmers wouldn’t hurt me. They’re afraid we’ll leave them to thirst. They know you’d never abandon me. Let me stay.”

“Like a hostage?” Furiosa snapped.

“Like a second,” Max corrected. “And I don’t think it’s a question of letting,” he added to Furiosa, slinging his shotgun over his shoulder and cocking a hip to take the weight from his knee.

While Furiosa glared up at him, Toast shot him a thankful smile, composing herself before Furiosa looked at her again. “Please, Furiosa,” she murmured, “I think I can do good here.”

“And you can’t do good at home?” Furiosa challenged.

“All I’ve done so far is kill,” Toast said, and winced when she saw how that hurt her friend. “And I’m not saying I killed badly. But I’d like to build for a while.”

Furiosa reached round for the back of Toast’s skull, and she reached for Furiosa’s, and they bowed their heads together, the black grease of the Imperator’s mark sticking where their skin touched.

“Go home, Furiosa,” she murmured, and she couldn’t help blinking as she stepped back. Before Furiosa could speak, or Max could give her one of those half-proud grins, she followed the children toward their hideous, burning structures, searing the desert air with guzzoline taste. When she finally turned, the Rig was leaving, the great black beast collecting her outriders with a blast of her horn.

And then another, longer, that was less ‘good bye’ and more ‘good luck’.

Toast found herself surrounded by the young ones, staring at her, and she put her hands on her hips. “Why don’t one of you show me where you got raided,” she said, “See if we can’t impress Viv by finding out who it was, eh?”

And grinning, the kids led her through the forest of metal struts and beams that was Gastown.

 

***

 

The sun was past her apex when they returned from Gastown, their tanker riding low on her wheels, and the boys leading the way, whooping and hollering.

Furiosa drove while Max watched their convoy, and Gastown itself, in their mirrors. She hadn’t said anything since they’d left, and he found himself watching the mirrors more than the road. He found himself watching the children that appeared on the road, even as the bikes tore through them, and hoped Furiosa took his silence for sympathy.

It was as the Rig arched up over one of the fury road’s rolling hills that he saw it, Angharad’s face triumphant and victorious, only partly skull, and then it faded to show him a plume of dust tearing over a dune, and the flash of black low to the ground that he’d recognise anywhere.

“What?” Furiosa asked, picking up on some tension in his shoulders that he wasn’t even aware of.

He held up a hand, studying the dust in the glass, until he motioned for her to stop.

“What?” she repeated.

“Just . . . a hunch.” He had his hand on the door handle before he looked at her, “Trust me.”

Her lips thinned and her chrome hand twitched, while the bikers rolled up beside them, the outrider asking why they’d stopped. For a moment, he considered leaning over to kiss her, a promise, or a reassurance. This morning, she’d been near feral in her need. Even mad, he wasn’t insensible to the precious thing she’d entrusted to his hands, and how fragile that really was. He wanted to kiss her, and lose the dead for just as long as she made him live for.

But not yet.

“I’ll meet you back at the Citadel,” he said, and climbed down from the cab, trying not to look too closely at the dust plume, taking a bike from a surprised but willing outrider and cutting a line perpendicular to the road through the dunes, only gunning the bike toward the trail when he felt safely out of sight, when it was just him and the sand and the engine between his knees.

He caught up to the Interceptor not because he was driving damned fast, or because the Interceptor was driving badly, but because she’d pulled up and the driver was sitting cross armed on the trunk lid, watching his approach through goggles.

He revved the bike as he approached, all the greeting he could manage right now, and when he stopped he remained astride the bike, waiting for her to say something first.

“I wanted to ask,” she said, patting the Interceptor’s hull. “But in my experience, men aren’t big on giving up their freedom.”

He said nothing to this, just studied the distance between his bike and her.

“I’m not going back,” Capable said after a moment.

Max shook his head at himself and glanced back over his shoulder at where the Citadel lay. “What if I said ‘please’?”

Capable huffed with laughter and looked at her boots. She’d dressed for the trip, braiding her hair in a crown and stealing war boy leathers, goggles, and even a jacket. “No. Not even if you beg.” The woman who stared him down was no frightened wife anymore, she was ready to steal a man’s prized possession then stop and argue with him about it. He ran his hand over his sand-streaked face and glowered. “And I’m not letting you come with me either,” she said, as though he had spoken his racing thoughts aloud. When he frowned, she rolled her eyes at him. “I don’t need you to protect me.”

“I think you do,” he said, though the one pistol he had brought with him made him feel a little like a liar. “If your aim was any good I’d be dead, remember.”

She shrugged one shoulder and tightened the fold of her arms, uncomfortable with the reminder. He might have felt guilty if he wasn’t so afraid of her getting back in the car. Don’t let her run, don’t let her run away, Furiosa would _kill_ him . . .

Instead, Max cut the engine and kicked the bike stand out, making sure it was steady before he dismounted. He crossed the sand toward her and even though she stiffened, she let him lean beside her on the car. They stood like that in silence for a while, letting the desert drink up the sounds of their heartbeats. When he finally, spoke, it was quiet and gentle. “Can I ask why?”

Capable sighed explosively, the few strands of hair she never managed to capture blowing about her face. She kicked one heel into the sand. “I . . . I am going mad there,” she whispered. “I am drowning, and everyone is just . . .” she took a deep breath, a breath like a drowning woman would take. “I am dying there.”

“Hmm,” said Max.

She shook her head. “I’m not like the others, I don’t have . . . Dag has her baby. Toast and Cheedo have each other. Furiosa has you.” She smiled wanly at him. “I just have Joe, who lurks in every single shadow.”

“You know, other people can’t keep you sane.”

“No, I know, and it’s not that they have some _one_ , it’s that their someones aren’t standing at the foot of their bed, accusing them. I tried to keep my ghosts at bay. I tried. I tried to build. I tried to kill. I was Angharad’s sister, but I’m not any more. I was Joe’s wife, and I’ll never stop being that, not inside.”

“I know,” Max said softly. His own titles were still on his back, as permanent as the tattoo Joe had ordered.

Capable shivered. “And I thought I might have been Nux’s but I don’t even really remember what he looked like.” She shook her head. “I can’t even cry about him anymore.”

It hurt like a punch in the gut. Always did, that realisation that the face you saw in your dreams was like all the other faces you ever saw there, only who your mind told you it was, and nothing like who you didn’t really remember anyway.

He sighed and stood straighter, feeling his knee and back twinge in tandem, and Capable stiffened again, ready to fight him. “When the clutch starts to slip don’t push it, okay? Limp somewhere safe and fix it, because she’s as like to give out on you when you need her otherwise. Treat her kind. Her radiator drinks piss so don’t get squeamish on me.”

Capable was smiling.

“And practice shooting, bloody hell. Learn to exhale when you shoot.”

“I’ve been practicing, Max,” she said softly.

“If you travel north a bit you’ll find a family on a farm. They’re using my blanket so tell them they owe you some food and water. Do you have enough? Do you want to come back and get some, we won’t try to stop you.”

Capable was grinning now. “No, I’m fine, I’ve been planning this.”

“Okay.” He sighed and stared at his boots, trying to think of whatever it was that had kept him alive this long. At last, he looked up at her again. “When they tell you to run, listen to them. The dead know more than they let on.”  She lunged forward for a hug and he hugged her back, squeezing her tiny frame between his arms and screwing his eyes shut against the dust. “You tell traders to come by us and we’ll know you’re still out there.”

“Okay,” she whispered, stepping back. Her face was still dry. She reached up to his cheek, smirking. “Can I get a kiss before I leave?”

Max frowned, wondering exactly where that had come from, but he shook his head and Capable laughed and turned back to the Interceptor, entirely unbothered by the rejection.  “Capable, wait,” he called, and when she turned he took three long steps to his left. “The surest way to make sure someone doesn’t follow you is to take out their tyres.”

She blinked, but then, without hesitation, removed a gun from her waistband and knocked the bike over in the dust. She smiled at him, then swung into the Interceptor with a wave, gunning the engine into the distance, spitting sand behind her wheels.

Max eyed his fallen bike.

It was a long walk to the Citadel.

But one he’d made before.

At least this time, it was a cage of his choosing.

So he found himself walking, favouring his left leg, one foot in front of the other, to get home.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So a massive thank you all for reading and commenting and kudosing and bookmarking. I have hugely enjoyed writing this, and felt very challenged by it at times, telling this story in a way that is respectful of the amazing job that Miller et al did. My Max is decidedly more put together than a lot of the Maxs out there, and I hope I did his madness enough justice. Your comments really make me smile, so don’t be afraid to say hi down there. 
> 
> I'm one of those who writes to music and I’ve been creating a little ‘Fury Road’ playlist while writing this, including ‘Diamonds’ (https://youtu.be/_koFbsnw_PM - Furiosa and Max's Theme), ‘Come Talk To Me’ (https://youtu.be/46XsFE_2dz0 - Cheedo's theme), ‘Chandelier’ (https://youtu.be/UE6a_nGUztA - Capable's Theme) and ‘Yellow Flicker Beat’ (https://youtu.be/3PdILZ_1P74 - Dag's theme) – as well as ‘Brothers in Arms’ which was my constant companion while writing the action beats. 
> 
> There is a lot of great fic out there, but I’m particularly enjoying ‘The Length and Breadth of the Fury Road’, ‘Engage to Heal’ and ‘The Wanderers’. So I recommend those if you’re looking. 
> 
> And lastly, I probably need a bit of a break from this beautiful perfect cinnamon roll of a universe for a while, but I’m the easily-influenced sort, so if there’s a story you think should be told, do let me know.
> 
> Thank you for reading, Palim.

**Author's Note:**

> I see this as being multi-chaptered, following the story of the wives and Furiosa. And I think I would like to get some smut in there too, just, you know, for smut.


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